E81 Workplace bullies: Surviving toxic workplaces

"There's two parts of your career. There's the part that you do and then there's the part that people see you do. And the second one is equally important to the first one." - 

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• Making your work visible beyond just doing it well
• Building influence through strategic relationships and social capital
• Leveraging introvert strengths in leadership and facilitation roles
• Testing if difficult colleagues are misaligned or genuinely toxic
• Handling workplace bullies with specific tactical approaches
• Recognizing when manager advocacy is absent and exit strategies are needed

Key links

• Anna Findlay LinkedIn 
• Book: "Surrounded by Idiots" 
• 10 types of workplace bullies | Anna Findlay 🔑 Career Coach

About our guest 

Anna Findlay is a Career and Soft Skills Coach who helps mid-career professionals who feel stuck, undervalued, or off-track to confidently reposition themselves and build the career they truly want. Whether it’s a new job, a pivot, a promotion, or simply a better way of working, she helps clients move forward with clarity and purpose. Anna also works with teams to strengthen communication and improve collaboration.

Her coaching takes a holistic, strengths-based approach grounded in self-reflection, emotional intelligence, and self-advocacy. Her goal is to help smart, capable people navigate uncertainty, build confidence, and achieve meaningful career outcomes.

Drawing on her background in human-centered design, facilitation, and meditation, Anna creates a practical yet empowering coaching experience that meets clients where they are and takes them to where they want to be.

About our host

Our host, Chris Hudson, is an Intrapreneuship Coach, Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.

Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.

Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.

P.S. If you're enjoying these conversations and finding them helpful, please consider supporting the show. Your pledge helps us keep bringing you incredible guests and valuable career insights. Thank you for being part of our community! You can contribute for less than the price of a coffee here.

Transcript

Chris Hudson: 0:05

Hello and welcome back to the Company Road Podcast where we help you navigate your career with confidence and purpose and help you bring more positivity into your work. And today we're tackling a topic that many of us probably face at some point in our careers, but a few really know how to handle. And that will be around workplace bullying, but also, we'll probably touch on a few other things because Anna, my guest is, extremely well versed in how to get the best out of your career. And, she's a career and soft skills coach as well. The bullying side of it, it's an uncomfortable subject. It's one that requires a bit of a strategic approach and I'm really excited to welcome our incredible guest today, Anna Findlay. Anna, you are, a career and soft skills coach, and you help mid-career professionals get unstuck and build a career that they truly want and you've got a background in human centered design, passion for emotional intelligence, and you take a bit of a unique approach to career development'cause you're focusing on self-reflection and empowering people to navigate uncertainty with clarity. You're gonna be sharing some of your insights today around, how to handle difficult workplace situations and other things from navigating tricky relationships to dealing with outright bullying or while helping build a better, more resilient career. It'd be interesting to dive into some of those points. Anna, maybe we just start with a bit about you and you could tell the listeners what your story has been and how you've got into this type of work.

Anna Findlay: 1:23

Yeah, absolutely. So the way that I started getting into soft skills career development, is actually by being really terrible at it. In my early twenties, I was pretty horrific at this type of skillset. Didn't really know that it was even a skillset you needed. Came out at uni, like very fresh faced, massive nerd, knew how to get things done, but didn't know how to have all those auxiliary skills that we need in corporate. So I did what any nerd would do and I started speaking to people who were actually getting ahead and getting roles and building careers, and I could see they were doing something. And so I did a big research project in my twenties and started building those skills myself. And because they're not very naturally occurring to me, I have a lot of strategies and techniques that I've had to build, and I've found that it's very easy for me to teach other people.

Chris Hudson: 2:07

Okay. Tell me what was your journey in finding that out over the different parts of your life and career so far?

Anna Findlay: 2:14

I guess all the way up to graduating university. The playbook I had was working and it was like, there's no stupid questions. Ask, whatever you want just doesn't apply in corporate there's a right answer. You either know it or you don't. And that was how life worked. Relationships weren't that important. It was very like singularity focused like your test results, you as a singular identity. Maybe a couple of group projects, which we all hated. And then, moved into corporate and just found that playbook didn't work anymore. And now it was all about self-advocacy, making like connections, selling your skillset before anyone would actually even allow you to do the work. I mean that for getting jobs, but also for pitching projects, getting buy-in influence, working together. But all of these other kind of skills were actually what you needed to build a career to even get in the door in corporate to let them get you in the door. And I hear you, as well as to grow your career, so promotions and those kinds of things as well.

Chris Hudson: 3:07

You raised an interesting point there, which is that you might be in the role, but not be in the role in a sense that, people need to be convinced of your capability through the performance of you in that role. So it's not always taken a given because you're the head of this or you're designer on this project. Or a strategist or, whatever function you're performing, it feels like you almost need to reinstill confidence in other people, through every interaction and every moment in your work. So how have you found those strategies playing out? Is it something that is taught a very specific way? Is it something that people just need more self-awareness around? What's helping there?

Anna Findlay: 3:44

So I think the first thing is recognizing that it exists. So there's two parts of your career. There's the part that you do, and then there's the part that people see you do. And the second one is equally important to the first one. And I think a lot of like introverts, doers, like my background was in design and I was in corporate, we're very focused on the outcome. We're very focused on getting the work done, and we're so busy doing all the work that we forget that someone actually has to pick up that work. Somebody has to take it on to the next stage and we have to have the buy-in and we have to have the influence, especially in design.'cause people don't naturally tend to listen to designers. So we don't have that kind of authority that like maybe an accountant or an engineer would have when they say, do it. People might be more inclined to do it. Influence skills are still important, but like specifically for design, you really need it. So basically, you end up with all these beautifully formed projects and they don't necessarily continue and you don't have the buy-in to get into the next stage. And it's the same with your career. Like you've got all these skills, but you don't have the buy-in to get to the next stage. You don't have the buy-in'cause people haven't seen you, they don't know who you are, they haven't seen your work. When they do see your work, you're not articulating in a way they can understand the impact and the value you're getting bogged down and the details. And it's really hard for them to understand. They're just tune out. And yet they senior leaders, dunno who you are. So all of those things will, hold back your projects, but also your career development as well.

Chris Hudson: 5:03

Pretty serious stuff then. it is interesting to think about. The extent to which you, you can control your own destiny within a large corporate environment to some extent. And where that might be possible, where it might not be possible. It feels like you can do probably more, or people can be doing probably more so to try and, trying to get other people to advocate for them, from the work that they do. And that continuity, would happen if, people were seeing you do great work. Obviously you get from one project to the next and. You'd be able to get some momentum going and then, people suddenly don't join the dots and they realize that you're in the middle of all of that. It's important to stitch together that sphere of influence. It feels, but it's not something that if you're just doing a job, you would necessarily be aware of the whole time. So how do people move from one state of being quite insular and focused on the task to. Building that does forever influence, do you think?

Anna Findlay: 5:59

I think it's moving. It's a couple of things. So people who are very good at doing the job often get very busy and they don't, they feel they don't have time to do the other piece. But actually when you make the time to do the other pace, even if it slows down, like your tasks, your work will get impact faster because other people will move it through faster. So I think it's reframing from like thinking about tasks and outputs to impact and then what is the greatest thing I can do to have an impact? And that will sometimes be a task that will sometimes be a relationship that you need to build. That'll sometimes be a conversation. That'll sometimes be like going back to your group strategy or team strategy, talking to your manager. That'll sometimes be like a weekly check-in where you talk about what you're doing and make that visible. And if that's visible with the right people, it'll get ahead. So I think, yeah, reframing the impact and then having a bit of a strategy if it doesn't come naturally to you. So you have to set yourself almost little targets and go, okay, cool. Who are three departments I could reach out to that might be interested in the work that I'm doing? And how do I have those conversations and like what's a structure I can play back to my boss and what are two forums I can share the work that I'm doing so that people know that it's happening, which obviously makes them associate the work with me, but also will help me progress the work within my organization. And the larger the organization, the more important that is. Reframing it to impact and then strategy and making it real specific and setting yourself almost at little KPIs aside of outside of your work KPIs and carving out time as well. It's really, it's worth the time. It's not that you don't have time, it's that you've got a different set of priorities that may be not quite as aligned to the impact piece.

Chris Hudson: 7:34

Yeah. You say time because maybe 90% of the impact, or the associated impact in relation to those outcomes could come from. 90% of the other people, right? Instead of just your core team, you're gonna rely on it spreading through the organization to some extent and almost self spreading. Which isn't technical term, but it's you needed to run by itself beyond the point, because you can't be in every meeting, in every conversation about it. So if you've stood up a new initiative, then you know, what are some of the things that can help it succeed. Now what's going to inspire people? Because I think impacts and outcomes, some of that can really help align a lot of other team members in terms of its language. People can get behind it. They can really understand where things are going and what role they would have in its shared success really. So what do you see working in that space?

Anna Findlay: 8:28

So the lesson I've learned very early on in my career, particularly in design, is I went through this really cool project and bought the, built this really cool thing, and there was no budget to build it. And we hadn't checked, there was no budget to build it for three years. So it was like basically a complete waste of time. And so I start with the end in mind and I check all the, what's the restrictions that we have? What's the budget? Who's involved? Who do we need to actually move it forward? If it was to go ahead, what's important to them? What's their KPIs? What's on everyone's to-do list, like what's top of priority for different heads of, and have those conversations generally, not just for your project, like you should be having them. Generally, and what's your team's number one priority? How does it link back up to the strategy that you've got as an organization, whatever that looks like. So having all that in place and then line laddering it up so that it can be seen as like a win-win and getting the buy-in for the end before you start and making sure that whatever you are pushing forward is not gonna be completely impractical in the context that you're trying to build it. I guess is step number one. And then step number two would be like. Getting them to them being whoever the stakeholders we need to buy in to actually contribute to the project in some way. Whether that's through, like I did a lot of workshops'cause I'm like a big facilitation person, but whether that's through like half day team and person workshop where we get together around strategy, like the more that they can contribute to it, the more they feel it's theirs, the less work you have to do to get buy-in because it's already theirs. So they don't think that you are trying to get them to do something that's not this. Does that make sense? So I think that all of that stuff is really helpful. And then like regular updates, presenting at the right level for the right audience. That was another hard lesson for me in my early career. Like you wanna make sure that you're giving the right level of detail for who they are. So doing some stakeholder mapping, what they care about, what level of detail they would actually want on their plate, and not going into too much detail for people that aren't interested. For that and the communication and circling back, getting people involved at different stages. So I think really strategizing around your buy-in and your strategic alignment as much as you strategize about the actual thing you're doing.

Chris Hudson: 10:37

Yeah. that is all incredibly important, isn't it? If you had to put a percentage on the amount of, just to quantify it in some sort of way, like how much time or effort as a percentage do you think you would need to invest in those sorts of things outside of doing the, do on the work that you're doing in your project or whatever it is?

Anna Findlay: 10:54

Depends on your level in the organization. So when I was like a junior mid, maybe it would be like 20% of what I was doing. By the time I got to my most senior level when I was back still in corporate, it was almost a hundred percent of what I was doing. Yeah. Depending on the project, and obviously I'm a desires working at that point, so some projects it was a hundred percent, and some projects it was like down to maybe 50, but never less than 50. That was always like a key, crucial component of what I was doing.

Chris Hudson: 11:21

I feel like that's just often overlooked. Do you see everyone else doing 50 or a hundred or 20? Those numbers seem quite big to me. Like I feel like if you looked around the floor of a typical corporate office, is everyone doing that? Probably not, right?

Anna Findlay: 11:35

No, I think not. But I think because not everyone is doing it. If it's something you can align to your key strengths and skillset, which I did, then you become this really invaluable asset. Like for me, I land on facilitation a lot. Like I was invited to all, like the senior leader strategy days. I planned them, I facilitated them. So I was always like finger on the pulse with exactly what was happening in the organization because again, nobody else was doing that. So they saw I could do it. So then I got brought in to do that. So there's an element of it that was just like aligning to what I was very good at. But I think that all projects should have it. And if you're not doing at least 20%, I don't know if you're gonna get it over the line. Especially in like large corporate government or hierarchical organizations. Like maybe if you're in a startup scale up situation, like where you know the decision maker is on next, you then maybe it's not gonna be that bigger a part of what you're doing, but large, complex, hierarchical, especially, at least 20%, like otherwise, you're not gonna get the buy-in that you need.

Chris Hudson: 12:31

I'm interested in the point you made around putting yourself into that facilitation role and in previous posts that you've put out on LinkedIn, you talk a bit about introversion has been part of your journey and getting to where, you've got to as well. So how has that journey been for you and what would you say to people that would probably not touch. Facilitation with a 10 foot pole. If they, if they had to, because they feel like it's just not for them. They feel like they would not be well placed to do that if they're feeling more like an introvert, think.

Anna Findlay: 13:01

Yeah. So I think again, align it to your natural strength. So I don't facilitate like an extrovert. And for lack of a better way of putting this, like I don't enjoy facilitating like fun things. Okay. Like team funding, build a bike, like that's a very extroverted energy kind of facilitation that most people would bring to that situation. So my facilitation style is all about the contribution of the other. So the strength, what I'm bringing to it is basically listening, which is introversion and then like pulling the different parts of what people are doing. I do a lot of planning, so like my, all of my workshops are very structured and planned.'cause again I'm an extrovert, so I can't really think about it on the spot. It needs to be structured. And they're also very inclusive. So I do a lot of activities to make sure that all different types of thinking styles can come into the mix. And there's not some voices that are drowning at others. So I think that, people think that introverts aren't naturally aligned to certain things, and maybe some of you aren't. And that's totally fine. But I think trying to find a way to do things that align to your natural strengths. So pick a couple of things that you are good at and see if you can apply them to different situations, and for introverts to get listening. Reflective inclusion writing is another big one, a lot of my introverted clients, we think about how they can contribute to company newsletters. Can they do a wrap up email? Because like writing is a strength of a lot of introverts. And again, pick your thing that you think will showcase you in a positive light and do it in a way that is authentic to yourself. We are not just trying to be an extrovert. Also, if you're a woman trying to be a man, that's another one that comes up quite often. You can do it authentically. And leaning into the natural rhythm that you work in, then you'll succeed. If you try and do it as someone else, you'll either burn out or just do a very bad job.

Chris Hudson: 14:44

Yeah. No, I think it's encouraging to see that the practices and the nuance around planning of these gatherings really is becoming more sophisticated than maybe it was because, if you rewind even just a few years, and it probably is still happening in some places still today, it's got a very kind of singular, a very typecast version of what a, a successful workshop would look like. And it's dominated by alpha characters, all the stuff that, is a lot of people would shrug away from. So the things that you were describing in the way that you're designing for inclusive. Environments and, more collaborative situations, is really encouraging to see, it feels like people are more, more tuned into that now, which I think is incredibly positive. So have you seen a big change and a move away from, more traditional facilitations styles into something that's a little bit more, evolved?

Anna Findlay: 15:33

I think, to be honest, I haven't. And the reason is. That because so much of what I do is aligning your natural strengths, your environment. I have sought out very intentionally collaborative, like intuitive environments and leaders and teams. And then as I've also grown in my career, I've been able to influence that as well. So if it wasn't there, I just. I'm like, we're doing it this way now. And so yeah, I haven't seen a massive change because those are the environments I've aligned myself to.'cause they're the environments I operate in more. But with my clients, I definitely see some of them in these environments. And some of them haven't changed. They're still there. But I think that's where it's really important to recognize the types of environments that you are gonna thrive in. We can do a lot to try and move the bar, and I think it is moving, like you mentioned, but there's only a certain amount of bar moving that you can do. If you're in a completely misaligned environment, it's gonna be so much easier for you to change your environment than to try and change your environment, if that makes sense.

Chris Hudson: 16:30

And it might be a nice segue onto the chatter around, workplace bullying and that kind of thing. It's a bit of a jump, but, I'm thinking about I guess what we know as people about the other people that we work with and, how we go about not just conducting our work, but actually really understanding the characters and, the roles that people play, the hats that people wear. It's difficult. When, bumps in the road on any project could happen at any time. Some of those things and most of those things that are actually driven by the people that are within those situations. Yeah. I'd love to hear your thoughts around, the awareness that people can have around the counterparts and, the people that they have to work with and, what should we be either ignoring or seeing, do you think?

Anna Findlay: 17:12

So I think that there's a lot of people in corporate who don't necessarily identify how they feel about a situation and to regulate themselves. So that can be a challenge. Other challenges, obviously, like just different perspectives. People have very different ways of seeing the world. There's a book, I think it's called, surrounded by Idiots that classify people all different colors. And I found like those kinds of classification systems have been quite helpful for me because I can preemptively classify stakeholders and different people and then I can appeal to the things that I know would be important to them when I talk to them. Otherwise, you're having two different conversations where I'm talking about logic, I'm a blue person, and they might be talking about feelings, so like either, so we'll have two totally different conversations. So yeah, a bit of empathy, a bit of understanding the other people's perspective. And then social capital take you a long way. So if you think about like a bank account, like deposits and withdrawals, like people who you don't maybe naturally mesh with. You may be more likely to avoid. And so you're not putting any social deposits and so when you need to make a withdrawal or when you have a conflict, there's nothing there. So you end up with these sort of downward spiral relationships. Whereas what you probably need to be doing with people, especially with the people that you might be inclined to avoid, is start to actually make those deposits, build up that kind of trust. And then when you have these, misalignments, there's a lot more to work with. People will assume that you're coming from a positive place'cause you're, not necessarily mates, but you're like acquaintances and there's a level of trust and understanding that's been built. So I guess preemptively doing that. I also really this team canvas just to start most tactics at you. So I dunno if you know the team canvas, but I like to proactively get groups that are gonna work together, to do things like, it doesn't have to be the team canvas, but it can be, before we start projects so that we can understand how we work together, who's what type of personality, what do they need. And I find that getting ahead of the problem is a whole lot easier than solving the problem. Another thing that I really like is like a work with me guide. And this can be quite good for like long, longer forming teams, not necessarily project teams that are doing something together. But you can put together like a little guide of how people work with you. Like for me, for example, I work in very focused chunks, so I'm well known for ignoring people on Slack. So I always put that in there I'm not ignoring you. And I often like up straight to the point and. Do a direct ask, I often put that in there as well whereas if, people are uncomfortable with that, they might, so I would note, what they would prefer and be like, okay, I'm gonna try and adapt my style. So in terms of the positive stuff that we can do to reinforce the tension that we can do to build social capital that we can do to build empathy, those are some of the things that we can do. But the other side of the coin, obviously there are some people who they don't have the best intentions. I think that's where all of those things will fall down a little bit. Because sometimes we can assume just because we have good intentions, we interrupt other people. Like we may not always get it right, but what, we're usually trying, we're usually not trying to be a dick. We're not usually trying to make people feel bad. And so you can start to assume that other people also operate like that. And it's an unfortunate fact of life that for whatever reason, there's a portion of the population that does not operate like that.

Chris Hudson: 20:16

There's definitely a confirmation bias and part of a relationship building in any way is looking for commonality between you and somebody else and in the workplace. You think you're all, in, pursuit of this same common goal, and you might misalign on the way that you're gonna do it, but you also might misalign on the direction or the, the end outcome as well. It might be that somebody's head is in a completely different space. So what are some of the tell tales, signs for spotting that do you think

Anna Findlay: 20:42

Spotting when people are in misalignment. For lack of a better way of describing it, it's usually a gut feeling. You'll often be aware or there'll be like, almost like little moments where the ground drops out from under you and you're like, what just happened? You go to a meeting and you think it's going one direction, and suddenly you're like curve ball. You're like, okay, I've missed something. There was somebody I didn't get on board that needed to get on board. There was a priority. I didn't have visibility of something is happening because where did that come from? So ideally, like the groundwork will help prevent these problems. So like starting new projects, new relationships, new teams, putting in that practical groundwork to get people on board, understand their perspective, to know what's their priorities, what's on their roadmap, what sort of a person are there, have you like built that groundwork that'll help get ahead of those situations, but they still happen. But you'll be aware of them. It'll be relatively obvious that it's happening.

Chris Hudson: 21:35

Yeah. What

Anna Findlay: 21:35

it does, take a step back and be like, okay, cool. Instead of being like, oh my God, that person's so annoying. Like they're just like, detracting from what I'm doing. You're like, I've missed something. What did I miss? What did I miss?

Chris Hudson: 21:45

Yeah. So you can play the role of like inquisitive person and curious person and try to find out what you've missed first, and that might be. A way to build special capital with somebody who you might not be on the wavelength with to begin with. Yeah. And you

Anna Findlay: 21:58

don't have to do it in necessarily in the moment. Sometimes that's not appropriate, especially if it's like a group or something like that. Afterwards pull them aside or sit some time and be like, look, I really wanna understand like. You said this, and this. Tell me more about your perspective. What does that align to? Like where is that in your strategy? What's your concern with this? And yeah, get that kind of what the hell's going on? But obviously don't say what the hell's going on. Come at it like really empathetically and listen. And then if you let them do that talking first rather than coming to'em and be like, oh no. Like you, you need to change your mind and agree with me. You'll have a lot more success if you ask them about their perspective first.

Chris Hudson: 22:31

Is there a crossover, do you think the workplace bullying from this point, do you feel like it, it's something that can escalate to that when, situations just misinterpreted and understood, things remain unsaid for many weeks or many months, and then all of a sudden you've gotta a situation where there's a conflict. How do those situations come about? Do you feel. So

Anna Findlay: 22:51

I think for me, I think about it like testing. So there's lots of different like approaches. So if someone is consistently like dragging down a project or keeps undercutting you in a meeting or is doing your behavior, we'll throw like all the tools at it. So we'll get curious. We'll talk about our ways of working, we'll ask about their ways of working. We'll look at the priorities and if we do all that and they're still doing it, then we're like, okay, this is not like a positively intentioned individual. This is not a miscommunication. Basically this is an asshole. And there are people out there that just really enjoy making other people feel bad. It can be a power trip. Sometimes they feel the need to like socially enforce like a, some of the social rules. So if you are like a, a strange person but not actually harming anyone. So like neurodivergent people cop it a lot. Yeah, I've been from different cultures, carpet a lot. So those kinds of, that kind of thing can happen. And then you have to switch your approach because then empathy is gonna be the worst thing for you. You don't wanna like endlessly try and understand them and then change yourself and become a shell of yourself trying to, improve the relationship with this person who's basically just. Being a dick. So then it becomes about self preservation, and building other relationships to protect yourself and that social network from the impact of that person. Because if you have enough relationships, you have enough social capital, they usually just leave you alone. They generally are doing it because they feel they have more social capital than you. You don't find many people at like the lower end of the social capital and organization. Occasionally you do, but they don't last very long. They're the ones that like, they'll. They'll get rid of them. The ones that are prevalent and stick around are protected by someone or something. Sometimes it's just like a crap culture. Sometimes it's like a particular old school way of thinking, particular manager, particular relationships. But they're protected by something. So you've gotta protect yourself. And also it's really important to state that if they're so well protected, that it's like an embedded part of the culture. Probably you won't win that final. Yeah, that might be a chance for you to be like, okay, is this actually where I can do my best work? And maybe it isn't.

Chris Hudson: 24:53

I think that's a really important point, that last one, because the extent to which you feel you can change, like if you're making all of those efforts to. Empathize. You find yourself in a hole. You're kind trying to get closer to the person that you don't, you don't wanna be with, basically, you don't respect and you're not learning off them and you can't see eye to eye on something, to what extent are you realistically gonna be able to change, something there. It feels like it would be a hard one. And I think I, I hear this happening a lot within founder cultures where it's just a certain way. It has been the way, forever and ever. It may have been a company that's been running for 20 or 30 years and there's been this kind of notion of, yeah, I guess green shoots and, exciting new things happening. But actually it's the same old people behaving in the same way. And it's accepted and you don't really feel like you can influence that too much beyond a point. You are, you're feeling a little bit powerless, so you could, you can go with the grain or you just gotta get out. Yeah, it's a hard one. That kind of shitty treatment is, it's overlooked. It feels like there, there would be a point at which you could tolerate it no longer.

Anna Findlay: 25:55

Yeah, a hundred percent. And also it's about strength alignments, right? So there are some organizations, some peoples, some managers who are never gonna see you with having any value. They're just like, whatever you do, you're always gonna be a bit shit in their eyes for whatever reason. And it's, you start to internalize it and then it starts to become you get a bit of a oh my God, am I shit. And then when you move into your next role, you have to do a lot of like rework to build up your confidence. And I see this a lot with my clients. Like I had a client, she'd been in a role three years. She was very good at her role. She was in digital marketing and her manager just did not like her, didn't wanna progress her career. She'd asked for a title change, not even a pay rise to reflect the job she was doing. And her manager was like, no. And so what we did is we run some experiments and so we're like, okay, cool. Can we influence this? Let's try it out. Like I've got you a toolkit. Let's see what happens when we apply the toolkit. And had a hypothesis that nothing would happen, but let's test it out.'cause this client came to me and was like, I'm one help getting a promotion. And I was looking at the situation going, don't think we're gonna get a promotion where you're at. Because you know your value's not recognized there. It's not that you don't have value. But it's not recognized there by the people that it would need to be recognized to progress your career. So we ran the experiments and the hypothesis came correct and the manager was not gonna have a bar of it. So then we took her out to the market. She got three offers, she got like a 30 K salary increase and she's had two promotions in the last two years. So like sometimes it really just literally is deeper.

Chris Hudson: 27:14

Yeah. That works here. That's great.

Anna Findlay: 27:15

She's way happier now, which is the most important metric. Correct.

Chris Hudson: 27:18

So it's coming back to some of those signals and I was coming back to the post that you put out on LinkedIn. If anyone listening wants to go and look at it, it's on your, it's on your profile. The 10 types of workplace bully and how to beat them at their own game, which just thought was very cool. And, it is catchy ties or, but also very important and simply written as well. It's often like you don't know. What to do because you don't really see the clarity of the situation. But I think, artifacts like that just really help make that clearer. So for those that haven't seen it, do you wanna just explain a bit about that and, how you came to. Create that. And you know what was behind it?

Anna Findlay: 27:52

Actually what turned me onto this post was I was actually seeing a lot of what I considered to be pretty bad advice, circulating around workplace bullies on LinkedIn. As I just mentioned, it's something that my clients do often face, like I work with introverts. I work with that a few diagnosed neuro divergent people and creative and tech. And they tend to be, I work with migrant, like I work with a lot of people who tend to be targets for bullies. And so I was looking at a lot of the advice. It was basically like, take a day jar. And I'm like, that's not really very good advice. So I thought I would maybe have a tracker, a crack at having, some better advice. And I think, it was about understanding where the bully is coming from. So for example, the intimidator, this is a power play. They want you to feel that. And so then what do you do when someone's like in this power play? It's almost like grave rocking them. I don't know if you've heard that term. But yeah, you don't give them an emotional reaction. Don't come to them and say, oh, I wanna understand. Because again, emotional, like no emotional reaction, firm neutral tone. Because if they can't get an emotional reaction out of you, you become boring and they'll just usually move on. So that's, a very different type of person than, for example, the inappropriate joker. And inappropriate jokers. So prevalent in Australian workplaces. Oh my God, Really. Like some really inappropriate jokes are about like gender or culture or sexual ology or like rape jokes. So really good. And so what do you do? And like women specifically, which is the majority of my client base, will often just laugh like, huh, and absorb the awkwardness impact to themselves. And actually you need to just hold a mirror. So again, don't do a big, oh my God, that's so inappropriate because then you know, you're the hysterical person about it, and then it becomes the whole thing. But reflect it back and don't ref, don't react. Huh? Just be like, what? So what? I don't understand. Can you explain it to me? Because when they have to actually explain it, suddenly it's inappropriate to explain the rape joke in your workplace. Who knew?

Chris Hudson: 29:47

Yeah. So different tactic,

Anna Findlay: 29:48

Nick.

Chris Hudson: 29:49

Not by telling a similar joke back, it's more about, just asking questions about that thing that has been said.

Anna Findlay: 29:56

Yeah, don't laugh. Don't diffuse the tension. Pretend like you're an idiot. What do you mean? I had one of my clients, I think someone told her, she sounded like a phone sex operator. That was her voice, and she was like, oh, I wouldn't know. I have never spoken to a phone sex operator and the guy was, sorry, what? I thought that was a good one. But yeah, find a way to again, don't react, don't tell them they're being inappropriate. Again, if you think this is, you would've gone through a process, right? So to have classified this person as a bully, we would've Okay. Gone in with empathy, ask their perspective. We might've pulled them aside and said, Hey, i'm whatever type of person, woman, immigrant, second language, queer. And when you say things like that, makes me uncomfortable. And so I prefer if you didn't, like we, we've probably gone through all these tests. If they're still doing it, they don't give a shit.

Chris Hudson: 30:41

So then it's

Anna Findlay: 30:41

time to take a different approach.

Chris Hudson: 30:44

Definitely. And all of these coming out, not just in kind of colleagues as I wanna call them, but in leaders and in managers and in, heads of company, of the organization, it can be, it could be prevalent throughout, right? You never know when you're gonna encounter such characters. So who else do we need to be looking out for?

Anna Findlay: 31:01

I, it's like I said earlier, the people who are engaging in this inappropriate behaviors are usually protected from the social hierarchy, and that can often mean that they're in a position of leadership, or their buddies was one of the people in positions of leadership, or, they think you have the boss of the company. Maybe they are. And this is one of those situations where I'm very passionate about people's managers being their advocates. If your manager is not your advocate, there is no amount of anything you can really do about it. Obviously we go through the testing, we test the, and if we come back in the non advocate, your career is gonna be severely limited, whether they're bullying you or not. So your manager, very important that they are not exhibiting these behaviors, and if they are, you probably just literally need to find somewhere else because. That's gonna be like very career limiting in terms of the rest of the culture. Again, it depends. Is it like one individual? Can you kinda isolate distance, use some of these tactics? Or is it someone that's like incredibly in your space all the time and influential on the culture? Or is it the whole culture? Is everyone just like this? In which case do you know? Do you wanna be there? So it's if it's just one person that you have to interact with, sometimes you can distance yourself from, you can put some of these walls up, these pays that they kinda leave you alone. Then that's probably something you might better cope with. But when it's your manager or a culture more broadly, like chances of you changing the culture is very minimal as one individual. And the personal cost would be very high as well.

Chris Hudson: 32:24

When do you think in somebody's, some somebody's stay at a company, when do you think that advocacy should make itself known? Most prominently, or, when do the first promising signs happen usually? Do you think

Anna Findlay: 32:37

the promising signs of your manager being your advocate? Yeah. Is that the question? Yeah. Yeah. So ideally when you are in the interview, and you start asking about their management style and asking for. Examples of employees, like who's your top performer? Why are their top performer? Start getting out those like nuggets of okay, you value this, and this. Do I, am I, do I, am I someone you're gonna value? How do you work? What's your ways of working when you're going through the onboarding process again, setting up those check-ins, having those conversations. This is how I work, how I get you get the best of me. How do you work? How do I get the best from you? What do you need from me? So those conversations, and it's like a massive red flag, by the way, if they don't wanna have those conversations. I think that's red flag number one. Okay, cool. So you don't really care about working with me and you're my manager. That's a good start. So yeah, red flags will come up either through them not having answers to those questions, not wanting to engage in those conversations, all through the conversations themselves. Some of them, again, you've gotta test it out. Gotta get curious. Gonna be like, okay, maybe you need that. What do you mean by that? By that, why that? And if you've gone through all the kind of iterations of empathy and trying to meet them in the middle, then you know where you've ended up and you've got a lot of confidence as well.'cause sometimes when this is happening, you can start to think is it me? Am I crazy? Especially if you've got someone who's gaslighting you or whatever. So like doing the tests and having those little learning checks of if I change this, if I do this, if I ask this, does anything change? And like often it will. If it's a person with a good intention, then it will, but it will give you a lot of confidence that you've reached the right conclusion without making assumptions if they're still doing it and you've gone through all the steps.

Chris Hudson: 34:13

cause I don't think you can underplay the fact that in those situations, often you just feel alone. You don't necessarily always have that one person at work. Particularly it's a new workplace. You don't know. You don't know if the know the people there very well. You're relying on either your own intuition or, a very kind of. A very kind of helpful, should cry on at home or with family or friends outside of that situation, but they don't know the situation either. So how do you suggest people best manage that element of support or self care through that time?

Anna Findlay: 34:43

Yeah, there's lots of levels to that. So I think when you start a new role, you should ask for a buddy, and that's a pair level, ideally. And then build out other pair relationships. So that should be one of your primary focuses when you start. So that you do have that kind of they reacted like that. Is that what's the, and you can have those kind of conversations, which you can't have with necessarily people that you were put into or more senior. So that can be a really important part of building your support system internally, as a starting point and having those kind of conversations. And again, it doesn't have to be like a bitchy thing. Oh my God, they're so right. It's oh, I was in a conversation with Alex. He did this? Have you, do you have any insight around like, why that happened? I wouldn't have expected it. Is that his style? Is that, does that happen to you? What should I do about it? Those kind of conversations. So I think that's step one. Step two is probably building your internal confidence. And I think this is most important when you ask someone from a minority group, because you'll usually have been socialized. To have your confidence knocked a little bit for whatever reason. Our world's not necessarily particularly kind to people from different minority groups. So you know, whether that's you're a woman or you're queer, you're an immigrant, or whatever it is, you've probably experienced like sexism, homophobia, or racism like in different iterations your whole life. So I feel like. A, finding communities that have also experienced that so that you can ruminate with them is also helpful. But like working on your own self-confidence in whatever way you need to do that. So I do a lot of mantras. I do a lot of hypno hypnosis, meditation, therapy. Like therapy. It's a good, it's a good idea. We should all be doing it. So yeah, working on your sense of self and your sense of confidence, it will help a lot. It'll help you identify what healthy behaviors look like. It'll help you. Feel okay about yourself when you're in environments where healthy behaviors aren't being modeled. You won't necessarily internalize it and, think that you are the problem, especially if you're not, it'll give you more emotional regulation skills to have these conversations. You'd be having to help other people regulate their own emotions if they're not able to do that. So that's important. And then, yeah, just community, whether that's your friends, partner, people from similar backgrounds, outside of work or inside of work. Like some workplaces, they have groups for different. People, like when I was working in Endeavor Group, they had a club for queer people, great people could go join that. When I was at the A TO, they had a neurodiversity network for neuro divergent people. So I, peer support groups really helpful where you can feel like you're being understood.

Chris Hudson: 37:09

Some really great suggestions there. Thank you for sharing that. In the situation where you can do all of that but still feel like. There's not really much you can change about your situation, if that support infrastructure isn't there. And it gets the point, you mentioned gaslighting before, but you're heading into self-doubt and you're wondering whether there's any choice or whether you just need to conform with what, what's being put in front of you That there must be a lot of people out there that have just, found themselves in situation that they have to just, Fall in line with what's happening, and stick it out for a few months until they can find something better. But for that period, it's just really horrific, for people to endure that level of, misalignment and just disrespect in a lot of cases. So for those sort of times, what would you recommend there?

Anna Findlay: 37:58

So quiet, quitting. That's the term that she used a lot. Something along the lines of quiet, quitting, Remove your energy. Tow the line. Care factor reduced as much as possible. If you've got leave or something like that, maybe take a couple of days, go and sort out your medical appointments, take a Friday off for that appointment that you have. Just emotionally distance yourself and give yourself some space, which will also be really helpful to use on your job hunt.'cause you, we probably looking for new roles. But I think the biggest kind of thing that you can do. To prepare for the situation before it even happens is make sure that you've got a really strong understanding of your value in the market, how to sell yourself. You've got a good network so that you don't really feel like you have to stick around. You're gonna be able to more easily move if you're in a situation that's not suiting you. And not to go too financially advisor either, but having a bit of a buffer if you're financially able to, can also be helpful. They call this fuck you money. You're like, no, fuck you. I don't want this child. So yeah, having my, not that you necessarily have to walk away, but sometimes just knowing that you could. We free up a lot of that emotional energy knowing that you've got options. Knowing that, if you apply for 10 roles this week, one of them is definitely gonna call you back because you know exactly what the marketers for your skillset, you know how to talk to it. You've, connected in with the network. Like all of those skills, they're really helpful and they mean that you don't have to feel stuck. But yeah, in terms of while you're stuck there while you're still there, quiet, quitting care factor zero. Try and take time off. Make space. Yeah. Yeah. With clients, it depends on, their situation. Sometimes, like things are more possible than others. But we'll usually put together a bit of a plan around like, how do we survive? Can we survive? And it's always a trade off, is it better to stay? Generally speaking, of course, it's always better to stay and have a job when you're looking for a new job, because that makes a lot easier to get a job. But I've had clients who have just quit. And then gone and had a few months off and gone back and looked and because they literally just couldn't, it was not gonna be the best option for them to stay. Yeah. So some, generally speaking, if we can try, we in quiet, quit care, factor down, make some space and move.

Chris Hudson: 40:05

So you take it out of gear. Not everyone can rean their energy positively in that moment. The walk away does often obviously happen. You need the ti time and space to reconsider your options and it's all too clouded at that point. So I totally get that. Interesting. Really good pointers. And what about, from a leader's point of view? So if they're noticing things within their teams. There's a team member, it's in the dynamics of the team, but have you experienced anything like that where the leaders are having to intervene and almost bring some of their team members in line? It's not quite performance management, but it's that there are some issues there that needs to be addressed from some of the toxic behaviors that are presenting. Is there anything there that leaders can learn from your approaches?

Anna Findlay: 40:47

Yeah, a hundred percent. So I think that it's, unfortunately it's quite right for leaders to. To do this, but I think there's a couple of things in it. So as a leader, the behavior that you model is the behavior that is accepted. So I would first, if you're seeing it in your team, and also obviously check leadership above you as well. Like, where is this? Where, why have they decided that this is acceptable? Sometimes they're just, lone wolf decided is acceptable, but usually it points back to something. And so you're like, okay, cool. Like we need to address that. But then if it's just the individual, obviously, like they will continue to behave like that unless somebody stops them. So it has to be made unacceptable. And that again, start with the same exact approach. Come in with empathy, with understanding what's going on. I've noticed that you're doing this, and then if it becomes apparent that they don't give a shit, then you have to move into more of I wanna say like enforcing this is not acceptable. It continues. This will be the, repercussions. And as a leader, you're actually well positioned to actually do the thing that I said to avoid in this post, which is take HR into the equation. Because that is literally like your job and also their job. And if you say there's a problem in your team with this team member, because of the hierarchical structure in the corporations, it's quite likely that will be taken seriously. Whereas if a employee says that about a colleague or a manager, it may or may not be taken as seriously because of the social structure. And again, they're usually the boys are protected by someone or

Chris Hudson: 42:14

something. Alright. Thanks so much Anna. I really enjoyed the chat and as we wrap up, I, I think what's been refreshing in this chat is that we've been able to talk quite informally about some really serious things, which is always like helpful to do, just to vent and clear the air a little bit. But for people out there, they might be grappling with some of these things. They might be observing some of those behaviors and characters that we've been describing today. So if it is a little bit more serious, they might have a question what, where would be some of the resources that you would go to for any of those people that just need some help and, maybe how would they contact you as well if they had a question?

Anna Findlay: 42:47

Yeah. Resources for help. Again, I have some posts on LinkedIn. I don't really have a repository where I would recommend them going to off the top of my head unfortunately. But in terms of if they did wanna contact me, LinkedIn is my best channel. I live there. So yeah, send me a dm. Yeah, I think that's a good point and I will also republish the bullies thing in case anyone's looking for that. So I'll pop that back up in a more findable location than a month ago. Could you share that as well with a couple of initial tips? But yeah, this information is not very well known. I think that's part of the problem, and there's not that many other people that I see teaching it.

Chris Hudson: 43:23

No, that's it. And I think, with the topic, it feels like these matters are often resolved behind. Carefully guarded walls and doors. So it feels like for having a more public conversation, it can only benefit people for them to be aware of this, but it's not always possible. So I really appreciate your time and your honesty and having this conversation today. Thanks so much, Anna.

Anna Findlay: 43:43

Awesome. Thanks Chris. Lovely to chat.

Chris Hudson: 43:45

Thank you.