EP 033 Jonathan Wilson 'The Silent Threat in the Workplace'

Jonathan has over 28 years’ experience working for the Metropolitan Police (United Kingdom) with much of that time in senior leadership roles.  He was bullied out of his career.

Jonathan’s police leadership required him to work with diverse communities, businesses, local authorities, across a number of government departments including the Home Office and Mayor of London’s office and internationally. 
He has considerable experience in prevention strategies, legislative changes, working with vulnerable groups, and partnership work.
Jonathan retired from the Police Service in 2020 after a traumatic experience of workplace bullying,  a period of his life that impacted on him considerably. He now dedicates much of his time to education and challenging workplace bullying behaviors which he says is entirely preventable and creating positive workplace culture.
Jonathan now talks widely across social media and to businesses in person about psychosocial safety at work.
He says, “Psychosocial safety is a leadership issue, and how you interact with people impacts their whole lives. It is therefore the most pressing issue of the contemporary workplace to master. Teaching your leaders interpersonal communications skills that empower not diminish. At the heart of bullying is always complex human dynamics and often unethical behaviours, corruption, discrimination, and harassment will emerge as the reason. Look deeper.”
Jonathan lives in Cornwall and has also established a  business running holiday cottages which allows him to pursue the many outdoor activities he enjoys both on and off the water.#pledgetoendbullying#stophurtatwork

Security Circle ⭕️  is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Transcript

Yoyo 0:15

Hi, this is Yolanda. Welcome. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. Ifpo is the International Foundation for Protection Officers. I just want to say thank you to all of our listeners around the world. Wherever you are jogging, sitting at your desk, or just chilling out at home. We are dedicated to providing meaningful education and certification for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference to our members' mental health and wellbeing. The key focus for today, as I introduce first of all, two very significant hashtags, hashtag pledge to end bullying and hashtag Stop Hurt at work. We're gonna talk today to Jonathan Wilson. Jonathan is gonna talk to us about. Creating safer workplace culture, encouraging better leadership and challenging workplace bullying, harassment and discrimination. He has 28 years experience working for the Metropolitan Police in the United Kingdom and much of that in a senior leadership role. Jonathan's police leadership required him to work with diverse communities, businesses, local authorities, across a number of government departments, including. The home office and the mayor of London's office and internationally. Jonathan retired from police service in 2020 after a traumatic experience of workplace bullying, a period of his life that impacted him considerably. He now dedicates much of his time to education and challenging workplace bullying behaviors, which he says is entirely preventable jonathan now talks widely across social media and to businesses in person about psychological safety at work. He says, I. Psychological safety is a leadership issue and how you interact with people impacts their whole lives. It is therefore the most pressing issue of the contemporary workplace to master teaching your leaders interpersonal communication skills that empower, not diminish at the heart of bullying is always complex human dynamics and often unethical behaviors, corruption, discrimination, and harassment that will emerge the reason. So let's look deeper. First of all, Jonathan, welcome to the Security Circle podcast. How are you doing?

JW 2:30

I'm very good. Thanks Yolanda. Thank you for having me.

Yoyo 2:33

Oh, you're more than welcome. Listen, I also discovered that you live in Cornwall, which really excites me'cause I'm from there. I don't even think in the pre-chat we even discussed the fact that I'm from Cornwall. What's the weather like down there

JW 2:44

today? Oh, it's gorgeous. Really nice sunshine. I've been out in the garden already for a couple of hours, so,

Yoyo 2:50

awesome. Cool stuff. Okay, look, psychological safety is a leadership issue. Let's discuss psychological safety for those people who haven't really come across it. Let's go to the bones of what it is.

JW 3:02

psychological safety is about making sure that people are, content at work, happy, motivated enthused enabled realistically, psychological unsafe comes from leaders who aren't prepared to listen to those below them where people don't feel free to speak up. When they see things wrong or they have an idea of how things can be done better or they feel that they're being treated unfairly or their colleagues are being treated unfairly. It could be quite devastating to experience it where, and businesses, organizations need to understand that if they have leaders that don't create an environment of environmental safety, they won't get the best outta people that are work, that are working for'em. In fact, they may have problems with retention and, with the way social media works now and websites like Glass Store where individuals can talk about bad experiences at work, it may actually impact on their recruitment as well. So they will lose skilled people, they won't, will have difficulty recruiting other skilled people. They will have a team, teams that aren't motivated, but crucially for the individual as well. When there isn't psychological safety, people can actually suffer with trauma and their mental health with institutional betrayal where an organization has a set of policies where it says it will behave in a particular way and then goes against that. And it's quite common for institutions to put posters up on the wall saying, we have these values and we have these ethics. But they're on a posters only. And the reality is that there are certain leaders that won't abide by them because they're uncomfortable. We could go a long way into this around selection of leaders and the correct selection of leaders, but. Where there are problems as well, but yeah that's essentially a, an overview of it.

Yoyo 4:56

Jonathan, when you think companies are spending millions, if not more, on advertising and brand awareness, trying to get across key narratives, especially with the big branded businesses and they're not doing anything to maintain the psychological contracts of their employees, and their employees are discontented, mumbling, and groaning about how they feel at work on social media and then looking for other jobs and going to Glassdoor, it kind of, it counteracts, doesn't it? That all that money spent on branding when an employee will tell everybody he knows that he's not happy where he is working?

JW 5:40

Yes, that's correct. There's a really good, interesting piece in the news at the moment, isn't there around this morning and Philip Schofield and, you are you are hearing different contributors to that program saying there was a toxic culture. And obviously there are people there that are unhappy. We've heard it of on other television programs, these are the ones that hit the media where there's bullying in place and people aren't happy and people do speak out about it and talk about what's happening. But I think if you, if I was to take it back to a context of policing if you have staff that are treated with disrespect, Are always on edge are possibly scared in their work environment from, the way that their leaders are gonna behave, then that is actually gonna have an impact on how they behave and how they come across. Now in policing that's particularly bad because, if you get someone who's, at the edge of their limits and their tempers frayed, they may not have the same calm controlled response that we would expect from them in public. If they, if they're suffering from a lot of stress because of a poor psychological safety in the workplace, you can transfer that across many different occupations.

Yoyo 6:57

What you're saying then is if individuals are in that kind of heightened stress state, then they're not gonna have the right disposition to deal with some of the more sensitive complexities around the job that require really rational, calm thinking. And I get that. So the police though, as an institution doesn't really promote leadership in accordance with leadership skills and abilities. Does it? It you just pass an exam at the first few stages and if you can pass a competency exam, that's it. You are promoted to manage people. It's not

JW 7:37

working, is it? No, it's, I mean, I've been very critical of the structure for a long time and speak about it a lot for my LinkedIn profile. The there's the exam. But also, certainly my experience within the Metropolitan Police was for any promotion from Constable way up into senior ranks, you need the the sponsorship of your direct line manager. Now, if you don't acquiesce or emulate the behaviors of that line manager, then you're very unlikely to get that sponsorship. You may even find if you're not acquiescing or emulating and perhaps challenging wrongful behavior, you may actually find yourself being crushed or bullied. But what happens in, if you'd looked at a pyramid of hierarchy within the policing because there's this filter where you have to acquiesce and emulate the behaviors of your particular line manager to to be promoted. There's a filter where you end up with lots of people as the, that you reach the top of the pyramid with the same behaviors. And that's even more worrying because they, there's then sort of this group think when no one's actually able to say, actually I think there's a better way to do this. Or, we aren't doing things in the best way because people want to, almost become accustomed to fitting in and emulating to or acquiescing to a culture which isn't always very positive. And I will put caution on that because in my experience in policing, there were. Some very good leaders within policing, but there were also some really bad ones. And the good ones got there by accident rather than by design.

Yoyo 9:15

I would sort of share that sentiment there. There were, and still are some amazing leaders, just people born to lead police officers. But I started to lose respect for the very senior ranking police officers because I started to think, how much have you had to turn away from the truth of a nasty situation internally in order to maintain your current status quo or even get promoted? How much have you had to avoid, getting involved with ethically? And I dunno if that's a sentiment that you share, but I know that recently also the Chief of police in Scotland, the one who's recently resigned, has basically said that she felt her career was railroaded because she wanted to change the toxic culture. And that's a classic example is it, of how given the opportunity, great change can happen, but then at what cost?

JW 10:17

Yes, it's quite devastating. There are quite a few police leaders and I've experienced myself where I've challenged wrong behavior or things not being done procedurally properly. And found myself on the tail end of negative consequences. And then having spoken to police leaders above them, there's a natural assumption that they want to protect those that they've sponsored into promoted positions. And therefore if you do speak up, you can end up being the fall guy and suffering some quite negative consequences because of it. And

Yoyo 10:50

you're not the only person that I've spoken to on the podcast. There's another gentleman called David Howell whose podcast is yet to be published, and he's published a book that basically talks about how an individual can go from just really loving the day-to-day job. And literally, if this is down to line management, this is down to having a superior officer where you are just not on the same page, and the consequences were career ending for him after a very long career like yours. What do we do about this, Jonathan? Because I'm sure that there are lots of people right now with a line manager not seeing eye to eye. I hear it so many times. You know when acquiescing isn't an issue, the risk is grave and very personal. It can affect whether you are applying for mortgages or not. If you lose your job, it has far ending consequences, life changing. What do we do? What's the solution?

JW 11:48

Well, it's very difficult when you are you are dealing with such a a deep embedded culture. The consequences. I, for me, the consequences were quite severe. I suffered, I experienced a couple of years of gaslighting and covert bullying, subtle covert bullying, which culminated in the end to really sort of quite horrific behaviors and several flawed attempts at trying to push me outta my role by the people that weren't working doing things correctly and didn't like me challenging the status quo, and I, and that position I'd been a superintendent in the police. For four years at that time. And I'd spent, I'd been in the police for over two decades and had quite wide level of experience. So I felt quite confident about being able to speak up. I also didn't think that I was someone who'd with what I'd seen in life and done in life both in my career and outside, my personal life, that I'd be someone who would be impacted. But it, it was quite profound the deterioration in my confidence. Much of that came from the institutional betrayal. And I went to one of the most senior police officers in, in, in the United Kingdom and within the Metropolitan Police and. Asked that they addressed the issues that I was facing in the bullying. Only to find that they'd spent the time between me asking for a meeting and going to the meeting with them to speak to the bullies first and to dismiss everything I said with no further inquiries as that's your view. Re repeatedly to each point I tried to raise. There was no objective assessment of any of it. And as I dried up feeling that it was pointless to go on, they turned around and said, from everything I've heard, you are the problem. So it is really difficult when you're in a situation like that. You, I was in an organization where I believed in the values. I was in an organization that I believed in the code of ethics. And then I find found out that none of it was true. With regard to that person, and leaders set cultures, and that person was one of the, as I say, one of the most senior officers in the country. So I realized that I was dealing with a corrupt culture. I described it to that person at the time as the values and the ethics as being the glossy cover on a magazine, advertising some lovely holidays. And when you opened it up, you found out that it was actually spare parts for lawnmowers, when you opened up the magazine, just the contrast was just so different. I found that my confidence, declined over the next 12 months, with the gaslighting and the rumors that were being spread. I lost confidence in myself and my ability to do my job. I had to go and see the doctor because I was feeling stress, which became anxiety and depression. I suffered insomnia and rumination. I ended up having lengthy periods of sickness, when I tried to come back to work, I couldn't concentrate, with the rumination and the anxiety. So when you are dealing with an organization like that, and it feels that the easiest thing is to ignore that sort of behavior and not want to uncover it, and you have leaders at that level, there's very little you can do. And then in the end, what I had to do was I, in the end, after several years of being very ill and I will say, and I'm not sure that I would've, not sure what drove it, but there were time. There was a time when I walked over a bridge in London and actually thought it might be easier to put myself over the side. That's. How serious the impact was on my health. So in the end I decided the best thing I could do was to cut my career short, a career that I'd loved for over two decades for reasons of my own personal health and leave. I was fortunate at that point that I did have enough service to to walk away with some pension, although financially, the loss in salary that I lost and the loss in the cut in my pension was quite significant. Which might, how can I say support, how serious the impact had been on me. And I couldn't work for another big organization now, and my trust isn't there. After the institutional betrayal that I faced from senior leaders in an organization that I believed in for over two decades and believed that had been a psychologically safe workplace, I, I. Could never work for a big organization again. No,

Yoyo 16:27

For those people that don't know the last couple of years in the 30 year policing career are the years where you accrue a lot of the final income pension contributions. So if you cut that short by a couple of years, the financial detriment is quite significant. So the fact that you had to make that decision and forego, you've taken a financial loss in essence, but you've had to do that for your own wellbeing. There'll be some people that will be, I don't wanna say accepting, but they would consider it, oh, well, if you were a junior rank, those things happen and But to be at such a senior level and to have that erosion of your confidence happen over time, that's really significant, and I think if people realize that it can happen at that senior level, they'll realize that it can happen at every level. And sometimes I think workplaces are just extensions of playgrounds from school, the cool kids, the ones that no one plays with, the ones that are quiet, the ones that acquiesce and crack on with things. And if you look at the children's playground, children learn from a very young age to fit in to a model that isn't really a kind one at times. If you could go back and do anything differently, at what stage would you go back and how would you deal with it?

JW 17:51

I guess, at first, and, and this will contradict, you'll get naysayers about workplace bullying. They'll say it's all about people whining and not being strong and and being woke, et cetera. But for me, when I started to see some of the negative behaviors early on, I just thought I'm dealing with difficult individuals, and I'm better than this. I'm strong enough to go on. I'm I have a job to do. I need to do that job to the best of my ability. I was enthusiastic about the work that I was doing. And I'd always been someone who'd looked to look for ways to, to drive change. And improve. The way that things were doing, whilst supporting staff and encouraging them to think of ways as well. So I, yeah, I was dismissing the behaviors at first, and then the gaslighting started, and the gas lighting's really difficult. It's really difficult, when you are, you call into ambush meetings when there's no witnesses and you are told that people have said this about you and the way that you've behaved, et cetera. And then they won't tell you what you've said or who said it, and just tell you to sort it out. Well, where do you start with that? There's no context. And when you have more of those repeat ambush meetings and you say, well, you challenge it and say, well, and they put it down to you and it goes on and on. And then, I. That's where my confidence started to, decline. I started looking over my shoulders all the time thinking, is this reality? Because I don't recognize this reality, and no one's given me anything substantive, for me to consider. I'm a person who reflects and and we would always want to, if I'd, was in that position was upsetting, people wanna know how, what I'd done and how I could improve, et cetera. But I wasn't getting any of that. So, and I think it really then it was very difficult to, I tried to challenge it. I. If I could go back now, go back right to the beginning, what I would've done is actually started making comprehensive notes of every single interaction that I had when it happened. But, at that time, over two decades, police officer and, and having met, throughout the organization, having met difficult people, I was just like, I'm resilient. I've just put this behind me. I'll just get on with my work, whereas realistically, because it was all so subtle and I should have kept really comprehensive notes, although I'm not sure that would've done me any good anyway, when I went up to see that senior officer, because, they I asked to see them because I felt I was being bullied. And they put me in the diary to see'em a week later. And when I went to see'em, it was quite apparent they'd been to speak to the two bullies. So, yeah it's, yeah. It's tough. But I would say to people, if you do feel that's happening, make comprehensive notes.

Yoyo 20:38

So for those people that don't know, gaslighting, it is a term that has had a lot of notoriety of late, because I think people in general have just noticed how broadly gaslighting is used in any type of toxic relationship. But the definition on Google is that gaslighting is a manipulative tactic in which a person to gain power and control of another individual plants seeds of uncertainty in another person's mind. And it's that self-doubt and constant questioning, slowly causing the individual to question their own reality. So a simple definition of that would be When, let's just say a neutral relationship. We'll keep it in the work environment. Where's the report I asked you to do? And the other person says, what report? I asked you to do a report for Friday. It's now Monday. Where is it? Oh, I didn't get an m s. Yeah, I did. I told you. And it's that whole question of that employee who is Junior now saying, did I miss that? Have I missed a conversation? Have I completely forgotten that we had this instruction, it was made. Am I losing my mind? And it's that process where the manipulation happens and anyone who is struggling with their self-confidence will then feel that even more because the stress will affect their ability to have memory recall, cognitive recall. And then it's just a downward spiral, isn't it? Give me an example. Can you, of where you felt the gas lighting. Was very prevalent in your personal experience?

JW 22:20

it was very prevalent. There were numerous occasions I was called down to a line manager's office with no set agenda, what I call an ambush meeting to, be told these people. On one occasion it was a couple of the managers who worked below you don't like the way you are speaking to them. And they're gonna leave the command. I was like, absolutely horrified. Because I would I'd always operated in the way of empowering, encouraging, supporting, talking to people on on a level I, within policing, my rank, people both be calling me Sue. I used to, ask people to call me Jonathan because I felt uncomfortable being called sir, so it wasn't, I wasn't the type of person that shouted always rude to people. So, when that was said to me, I was absolutely horrified. And I said, well, can you tell me who it is? So I can make things right. No, they don't wanna be identified. Well, could you give me some context of what I've done then, so. They don't wanna be identified, go, just go and make it right. Sort it out. And then there were, next thing it was some other officers within the commander, I, were peers, you've upset them. Well, who are they? And what have I done to upset them? Well, you just, I'm not telling you, you just work it out. It was that. And then where it became, this is when the transition went from the, from the gas lighting. And the really confusing me was that he called me in to say that some partners in the security service and the home office couldn't work with me because I'd organized a meeting with the London Mayor against their wishes, and he already knew that wasn't me that had organized that, that had been an assistant commissioner who had organized that, which was way above my rank. And he already knew that, and I reminded him of that. But, and I also socially my counterpart from the home office, I was. Quite on, on quite friendly terms with and went out socially with at least once a week, and she had said to me, if we'd had a problem with you, we'd have told you. And we knew it wasn't you that organized that meeting, so it, it was all of this, it was trying to put this sort of thing. And actually he, then, he then brought that up later when, on one of the flawed attempts to push me outta my role, told me that was one of the reasons why I was being pushed outta my role because of this briefing to the London mayor that shouldn't have gone on. And I had to remind him, and this is where it was flawed, I reminded him again that he knew from both of those agencies that it wasn't me that had organized the meeting, but it was, it just, it went on. There were just loads of attempts to, to destroy my confidence and to push me around.

Yoyo 24:59

Gaslighting goes deeper though, doesn't it? Because I find having talked to people who talk about their experience at work being bullied, they find themselves thinking and actually questioning their own reality deeper by saying, am I that person? Is it am I mean, do I speak to people the way they're describing? And it's quite corrosive, isn't it? Because this comes outta the work environment now, and then it goes into the home space. And even very simple things, conversations between relationships and marriages can become very different when that corrosion has already happened.

JW 25:38

Yeah. And I had this point where I was looking over my shoulder every time I had an interaction with someone, because Yeah. It does take away your reality and you are thinking, is it me? What am I doing? And you are double checking everything you say and making sure that you haven't upset someone, et cetera. But the problem is it drags on your mind as well. So when, in my personal experience when I came home, because it impacts so, so much on you, I, this is part of the, the insomnia where I wasn't sleeping properly at night because of the rumination and the rumination that was going along when I was, during, the daytime or in the evenings for my family where I hadn't got much conversation because my mind was always worrying, questioning everything that had happened and everything that had been said. And it is just totally corrosive, it's

Yoyo 26:25

because your brain is, when you look at the definition, rumination is a really good word. It means a deep or considered thought about something. And for people who are quite naturally neurotypically curious, and have this as a way of processing data and information, feelings, it's incredibly destructive because you find yourself, I don't know if you've ever had it on like a PC boot reboot loop where it keeps rebooting, and you can't actually get access to pc. Your brain's doing the same thing, isn't it? It's just finding solutions and because those solutions aren't there, it just keeps processing and that's a gradual wearing down of energy and everything that makes us confident and normal.

JW 27:08

I'll give you an example of how impactful it is when during a period of being signed off sick because of depression and anxiety, which I will say was eventually diagnosed as trauma. The doctor had said to me, get some exercise. Now I, for years I trained in TaeKwonDo and in and going to the gym and I was becoming less comfortable in being out with people and in public and going, going to public spaces at that time because of the anxiety, et cetera. So, some of the exercise that the doctor was telling me, I was out, digging trenches in the garden, and I found there were times where I would put a shovel into the ground and then I'd just freeze and I would look and I'd been there for 45 minutes or so, because I knew I'd gone out at lunchtime and suddenly it's almost, almost one o'clock. And I'd literally just gone out and frozen and it was rumination, something, my mind whirring over and, just locked in, locked in time. It's

Yoyo 28:07

your body telling you to stop, I think. Really. And it just means that you are reaching that capacity to be able to process rationally. Woke is something that gets mentioned a lot and if we look at the actual definition for work, which I like to do,'cause we all know that it's got some very controversial meaning. It basically means you have an active awareness of systematic injustices and prejudices, sorry. Especially those involving the treatment of ethical, racial, or sexual minorities which is fairly fair actually. But when people are called woke, it's used in a really disparaging way. It's almost like the word woke is quite a positive thing. It means you have a general active awareness of systematic injustices. So when someone says, oh my God, that's just so woke, are they really just coming out and saying, I don't believe in, fairness and ethical, racial or religious

JW 29:10

equity. Okay. So I mean, I'll put this into context because, I'm a campaigner against workplace bullying and I do lots of work and lots of posts on social media to try and raise the work awareness around, the harm of toxic cultures in the workplace and workplace bullying. Sometimes when I put on really good posts, which get a lot of attention and and a lot of support, I also get comments from, a group that I would call them naysayers. And those are the people that don't want to accept the workplace bullying in place. And it occurred and it's all about people whining and whinging and not, not being strong individuals and there's a reason that they've been spoken to and they don't understand. It's just good management, et cetera. And there's a mindset out there of certain people, we all have different views and they're always a mindset out there that bullying doesn't exist. But then I tend to feel, in my experience of speaking, engaging sometimes in conversations with those sort of people. They're actually the people that are probably the people that perpetrate the bullying in the workplace anyway. So they use the word similarly with the word woke. When they use it in a disparaging manner, it's because it's something that they're uncomfortable with. Possibly they recognize that their behaviors don't fit with that. and so they try to disparage anyone that they believe is behaving in that way. It's really interesting'cause you see this within policing, there's so many people that jump up and say around, institutional racism that they're being called racist. I mean, I personally would never just call institutional racism. I'd say that there's institutional discrimination in all workplaces, because there's differences and sometimes it's institutional because it's about the way the organization set is set up and operates. And it's not about individuals having problems with someone with disability necessarily, or with age or their ethnicity or their sex or their sexual orientation. It's possibly quite often about the way the organization operates and its systems and processes and its culture. And I. But people jump in very quickly and say, someone's telling me I'm racist. Because they've said my institution's racist. They're accusing me of being racist. And they get really defensive about it. And that we see that even up at the most senior physicians, the new commissioner in the Metromont police, mark Rowley saying, I don't accept the word institutional. Well actually, let's get real about this. If we have members within the police service that feel that institutional racism or institutional discrimination exists, and we have members of the public who the police service are there to serve, who believe there's institutional racism or institutional discrimination it's an issue. And rather than denying that it's there, the best thing that any commissioner could do would be to say, I don't personally see this, but I have to acknowledge that many people perceive it's there and therefore I and my colleagues of all banks need to sit down with those people within the organization and out outside the organization and understand why they have that perception, and then work with them to address it rather than just denying its existence or their part in its existence. Yeah, 100%. And because you will not bring people on board or solve the issue by denying it. Yeah. Yeah. People will be confident once they hear, okay, we want to understand why you have that perception. Yeah. They'll gain confidence.

Yoyo 32:53

I feel like Mark Rowley was misadvised.'cause he is obviously got a publicist, a pr, a press office. And somebody somewhere has said, if, just put a, strong face out there. Tell him it's not true. Whatever they say, the media pushing, hyping, manipulating it. But you are absolutely right and I think you should be his press advisor, Jonathan. I think you have it spot on.'cause to deny it is to deny everybody else's feelings that are completely controversially different and gaslighting them at the same time saying, we're not a, we're not a discriminatory, institutionally discriminatory environment. So you're obviously making it up.

JW 33:34

Well it's interesting because I've been talking to a journalist recently about my experiences and they questioned the mayor around my bullying. Now bearing in mind Louise Casey had just reported. The grievance procedure was unsatisfactory and had let people down who'd make complaints about the way that they'd been treated. And the met response to the journalist was that there had been an independent investigation into my concerns around bullying, not instigated by that senior officer and that no bullying had been found to be the case. Well, and the met under Mark Rowley came back and put that up as a quote. So when the question went back to say, well, what's that independent investigator? Truly independent, because I'd been told that they were an ex HR manager, and they met them, refused to answer. So there's a, even under Mark Ley, there's a reluctance to be open. And to to see, and it's not like I'm looking to litigate, it's quite a few years ago now, but there was an opportunity there for some learning, to find out what went wrong because all of these all investigations into bullying or discrimination, et cetera, et cetera, should be. Conducted by a truly independent investigator and someone who's trauma informed.

Yoyo 35:01

IFPO launches a new app called club. To support members as they prepare for their CPO certification. It was designed in collaboration with urine. The company behind protect UK app. Which has had over 1 million downloads and won lots of awards.

35:22

This new app called club. Offers access to the CPO textbook. Almost 200 sample questions along with many other resources and documents. So don't forget to take a look at the F PO club app. Especially if you're thinking about doing the, IFPO CPO certification. Good luck I

Yoyo 35:53

There's a lot of organizations, not just the police force that are really missing out on opportunities to listen to people. Those businesses generally are not interested in listening to how you feel as a customer. And I think the sooner businesses definitely start to open up and listen to people. It's gonna be a new way I think of really strengthening an organization's delivery. And the police are far behind. I mean, I remember. When I joined in 2002, it just felt like I'd gone back 10 years in a, like, for like situation across mentality. And even down to technology we were using and, we weren't even allowed to use navigation in our vehicles. We were expected to, as a new police officer on the beach to know every single road, every single part of our neighborhood, to be able to respond to an emergency. And there were quicker, smarter ways of doing things. And there were then, so yeah, I, I almost feel like I wish Mark Rowley deliberately went out to speak to people who had left the force and said, do you know what? There's some missed learning opportunities here, but I'd like you to be on an advisory panel. They say that to to really learn, even as an individual, to listen to your harshest critic as much as that can hurt, because that's how you really genuinely can improve and become better. What's your view on

JW 37:14

that? Well, it was Benjamin Franklin who said, our critics are our greatest friends. So you know, someone as esteemed as that to say something as sensible as that, you would've thought many leaders would've aspired to it. But mark Rowley, when he came into position, he put, he published an open letter on LinkedIn saying to all the people in the organization and outside the organization that we've harmed and let down, I want to hear from you. And lots of people went in and responded and he, and, and certainly I did as well, and what I wrote wasn't belligerent and it wasn't talking about my own personal experience, but no one seemed to have got a response from him. And one, one aspect, but also I have a suspicion that it was really a how can I say a public relations sort of marketing exercise rather than having any sort of substantive commitment and concern and looking for anything constructive, but what, where he should be taking that step back. He should be saying, We should be learning from these because, as a leader, I should be creating a psychologically safer environment. And that psychologically safe environment hasn't existed for many people who've left, who have been seriously ill, et cetera, et cetera. And something's gone wrong and I need to learn from them so that I can make sure in the future that we do have a psychologically safe environment and that we can because that way we'll keep, experienced people, we'll keep people motivated and we'll have people who will, if they're treated professionally and with courtesy, will hopefully treat people they come into contact day to day in their work with, professionalism and courtesy as well, rather than being people who are stressed and on edge.

Yoyo 39:00

there's no doubt about it. I came across you, Jonathan because I love the content that you were sharing on LinkedIn and there's some really good educational content around our including the term Flying Monkey. And I have to say, I only discovered this very recently, but I have come across it and I'm thinking, okay, how do we explain what Flying Monkey means to people who've never heard that term before? Give

JW 39:25

it a shot. Okay. So, a flying monkey, they tend to be associated with narcissists and a flying monkey will do What the narcissist would like. Some of it I believe may be because they see, that the narcissist may possibly harm them. So, or the narcissist is in a position of power to help them further their own career or their own agenda. So they will follow the narcissist agenda and support them and help them. And if that includes being vindictive and harming others, yeah. And being deceitful. They will act in that way or turning a blind eye to what's happening, to keep themself ingratiated with the narcissist, so they will work that way.

Yoyo 40:13

They've all, they've always said, haven't they, that sexual discrimination, the workplace is always done from a position of power. And I think the commonality here with the term Flying Monkey is that this is also something that's conducted by the person of power. And it's interesting, actually, I'm gonna read this out. The term Flying Monkeys was inspired by the Enchanted Flying Monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. Who was sent to do the dirty work for the Wicked Witch of the West. The phrases become used to describe people who do the bidding of a narcissist. Now, people don't just volunteer to do the bidding of a narcissist. The narcissist is usually somebody who's in a position of seniority at work, right? Yeah.

JW 40:55

Yeah, that's true. So I mean, I could do a, a great example of a of what I would describe as a flying monkey. I when I was eventually going to leave this role from where I'd been bullied I was literally at the point of resigning that night. I was so so, broken and I got a phone call and I'd made a point to one senior officer that there was yet another contradiction in the way they were gonna send me, they were going to send me to work for that senior officer who had who had dismissed all the points that I'd made around bullying. Eventually, out of all the different options they'd used to have moved me, they said they were moving me for further operational experience. So they then went to send me to a strategic role, another contradiction. And I I made that point and I think there was a bit of a panic, at the senior levels, because I'd pointed out a number of contradictions. So I've got this this telephone call, which I'd almost count as panicked from a female chief superintendent and said, can you come and see me tomorrow morning? And I went to see it and I said, look, I, she'd never really manage me, but I'd had plenty of interactions. And I said, look, all this stuff that's been said about me, you haven't, have you ever seen experienced any of those behaviors from me? She said, no. I've heard about it and yeah, she was just there. She was there who was the person who at that point wasn't contaminated with any of the sort of corrupt behavior. So they'd seen her as someone to sort of try and pass on this message, and there she was joining in with it and then later going off and spreading rumors herself to other people.

Yoyo 42:31

It's hard to imagine though, but is that individual acquiescing because that's the way of surviving?

JW 42:39

No, they were acquiescing'cause of pure ambition.

Yoyo 42:42

Yeah, that too. Which goes back to my comment around how I lost respect for some senior ranking officers. Just because you know that the ambition is blinding them and there's a single motivation, and it's not about, I remember thinking how many times have you ever stuck your head above the pulpit to really help somebody? Or would that be too detrimental to your ambition? I think that's where the heart of the heart of the institution certainly does need some reform. Jonathan, you do a lot of campaigning and I think what you do is admirable. There might be some people out there who are currently in a situation where gaslighting has now become something that they're aware of and they feel is happening to them. They are now aware of the Flying Monkey situation. They're now thinking, oh, crikey, that explains that. What can we advise them? And I know it's very difficult because it's a very broad subject, but the realization of knowing you're in a situation that is toxic. What's your best advice?

JW 43:42

So my advice is to go out and to read some of the types of papers that I I publish on my posts on LinkedIn. To understand, I think, first of all, they need to understand workplace bullying. They need to understand why people are targeted for work, in workplace bullying. And it isn't because, they're. Poor job. Most people who are actually targeted by, for workplace bullying tend to be productive, creative, enthusiastic, hardworking individuals. And most people and they are targeted because the bully either is jealous of the way that they work and what they're capable of or feel threatened by their work or their capability, yeah. And this is sometimes you get line managers who bully because they see that they have someone working for them that may be more capable than them in doing something. But actually, leaders should embrace that. I had a boss once who said to me, the reason I'm successful as a leader is because if I was asked to build a bridge across the Thames, I have no idea how to build a bridge. But I would say, yes, I can do it because I'd go and find someone who could build a bridge for me, and that's what leaders should be looking for. But just going on to those other things, they should, they need to learn why there could be targets of bullying. I think they need to understand, read about gaslighting and how that operates, the types of being behaviors that they could experience so they recognize and they can confirm to themselves they're being bullied and they need to read things like flying monkeys and institutional and about institutional betrayal. And then they need to start taking notes and recording what's happening, to understand if they could go out and do all that sort of reading and you could complete all of that reading in an evening, casual reading in an, with a few choice articles. Then when they understand what it is, they'll be even better equipped to write notes when they see things that are relevant and hit home with what I've, we've described as those sort of behaviors.

Yoyo 45:47

Certainly from an objective point of view for those working in corporate, you have acas, which is the conciliatory neutral body that can provide advice to anybody who is in a work situation and maybe needs to get some advice. They have limitations though. Sometimes you might have to go and get your own legal advice to see what your current position is. But look just one more thing to finish up on, because I, and this is where I had a mental block earlier'cause I forgot the word whistle blowing. A lot of companies now, Jonathan, are using whistle blowing hotlines or whistle blowing processes within organizations to, to try and provide a safer environment. However, this is also a process that can be abused. So what can the police do? Certainly in respect of breaking down those barriers to enable people to speak freely. When we've got PAC mentalities going on within groups for sure, as humans, we gravitate towards pacs and that's why sometimes a lot of people go and acquiesce when they should really stand and speak up. But what process would work that would encourage people to speak up and speak out that's integrity can be preserved and not be used in a malicious way.

JW 47:03

Okay. So there's quite a few companies that have set up independent hotline reporting either through telephones or through apps, which are quite good because they will then keep. Data that's completely independent. If you have internal reporting systems, then there's always the suspicion or the reality that can be made to go away or manipulated or is shared at the wrong time. So, the person that's reporting can be harmed or face retribution. And I think those statistics are really important. And I think that basically a register should be kept of those reports that come in. And if it's kept separately there's a level of integrity. It's kept by a separate company. It's the same as using independent investigators as well, versus integrity. There's been no undue influence or corrupt activity within that investigation. And another thing that I think is really important, and certainly all the way through my service, and particularly in my last sort of six or seven years I make, every single year the Metropolitan Police did a staff survey. And not once did it ask about workplace bullying. Do you feel that you are being bullied at work? And if you'll notice, and I still don't think it has the importance because both. The I IPCC investigation into the behavior in Westminster. And Louise Casey's report said that the Metropolitan police is facing a problem with bullying, racism, misogyny, and homophobia. The new commissioner came in and he said, I'm gonna deal with racism, misogyny, and homophobia. But he dropped bullying. Now bullying isn't unlawful at the moment. No. So it was quite easy to drop that. But what they're failing to see is that bullying behaviors lie at the root of all of those other things. And if you don't address those bullying behaviors and they become normalized, when, when our person is bullied, If they happen to be in one of those protected groups, they quite rightly will believe that they face those behaviors because of who they are. And this is the problem, and there's very shortsighted for people who are in strategic positions to ignore bullying when they say they're going to deal with racism, misogyny and homophobia, et cetera.

Yoyo 49:31

Jonathan, thank you so much for your time today. We'll make sure that your hashtags, your LinkedIn profile and acas information as well as provided on your bio. I really appreciate you sharing your personal experiences and keep

JW 49:46

campaigning. Okay. Well thank you for having me, Yolanda, and given me the opportunity to share some of my views and experiences. We appreciate it.