25 - Managing Volatility and Preserving Team Safety

How can you possibly create a sense of safety and ally-ship on your team when you have a volatile staff member? As a leader, you're bound to face conflicts, but it's how you handle these disturbances that can either safeguard or shake the very foundations of your team's wellbeing. We dissect the critical steps for ensuring safety, seeking support, and making a choice about how you show up.  You may be able to create the difference between giving up and giving in, or engaging and fostering connection.

Can you as a leader manage your own reactions in the situation and support someone who needs it?  Can you maintain the delicate balance of how much to step in?

If you want to be able to cultivate a team of allies, where everyone can be human in their growth, this is the episode for you!

To have your questions answered on the show, submit your story here: https://allthrive.ca/share-your-story

Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink is live every week at 5:00pm MST.  Please join us to get answers to your leadership questions! https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect, starting with your team, going out to the organization and even out into people's personal lives. Here we offer you the chance to learn from real-life stories of leadership so you can gain a deeper understanding and level up your own skills From communication to culture, to power and equity, to feedback, to resolving conflict and more. Join us and make sure you're creating the ripples you want. Welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink. Today we're going to be talking about what essentially is a choice in how we perceive people and some of the flip side of the subconscious choices we make, and then rolling this all up in the challenges and the complexity of dealing with safety in the workplace, bb writes in with their story. I have been focusing recently on my own professional development as a leader. One of the things I read talked about the importance of your staff team being your allies. One of the things I read talked about the importance of your staff team being your allies. I would love that, and I believe that most of my team fall into that category. I do, however, have one staff that I just don't think it's possible to see as an ally. He is unpredictable and prone to anger and outbursts. I know I'm the boss, but he often pushes or responds in such a way that I'm afraid to go against him, so I go along with what he does or says. Me and my team's safety is priority, so how can I prioritize that and be a good leader? Thank you very much for sharing that, bb. It sounds like an incredibly stressful situation and I hope that this in some way will help you navigate it. Now there's two directions I feel the situation could go that are very different, so I will go through them both, the second being a little bit more calm and the first potentially being a really complex and worrisome situation.

Speaker 2: 1:54

Now, some of the language that you use suggested to me that you perceive some sort of actual danger to yourself or your team from this person. Now, danger can mean a couple things, but if he is physically harming or threatening to physically harm you or your team, this is no longer a leadership issue about how to be allies with this person. This is a serious situation and you need to go get support for it. If you have leaders in your organization that you report to, if you're somewhere mid-level management, go talk to them, talk to HR. You need to bring them into this and start talking about what needs to be done. If you do not have a team above you, if you are the top level of management or the owner of the organization, then still bring in outside professionals HR, maybe legal who could help you navigate this situation, this dynamic, and so you and your team end up safe and you have some help with this, because this is a very serious issue. No one should be made to physically feel unsafe in the workplace. If you're feeling it, I suspect others on your team probably are too, and so you want to make sure that employees are not dealing with a safety issue. Please address this quickly. Now that that said, in case that was the situation, which would be a very, very serious thing, let's look at another direction, which I suspect is maybe more what you were talking about, and that is about protecting the emotional safety of yourself and your team. And I mentioned this direction specifically because you spoke about wanting to see your team as allies, and to me that suggests that in an ideal world, there could be a situation where this one team member could also be an ally, and we're going to assume in this case, then, that his behavior is inappropriate, definitely in the office. So he's unpredictable. He's maybe having these angry outbursts, but he's not actively threatening or dangerous. So if we're assuming over on this end, I'm going to say I hear lots of these situations.

Speaker 2: 3:55

People become upset, they don't handle it well, they stomp around, they yell, they're visibly riled up, and that is on them. Everyone is responsible for how we show up. We're responsible for our ability to emotionally regulate ourselves in stressful situations. However, people sometimes don't have that capacity, they don't take that responsibility and, unfortunately, it's the people around them that can suffer from that, because, on the other hand, when it's you that is being shouted at or someone's throwing up their hands or stomping around you, that's probably stressful for you. Most people feel some sense of either maybe accountability, like somehow they're responsible for that other person's emotions, or maybe like they need to solve the situation, they need to peacekeep or calm this person down somehow. And this could be regardless of whether you had any impact on why they were upset in the first place. And even like yourself, bibi, you may feel this need to go along with them because you think that'll calm them down. So you have to recognize that we, of course, have an emotional reaction to this person getting upset, having this big reaction.

Speaker 2: 5:06

And let's just start to dive into this. What do you think upset them in the first place? When I mention I hear about lots of these situations. I've heard lots of reasons behind it. Maybe something has just been so stressful and overwhelming in the office or in someone's personal life. Maybe they're having a really hard time with a change in the company structure, or maybe they're really stressed out by their position and what they're being asked to do. There are so many reasons that they could be upset and maybe even they feel threatened in some way themselves. We've talked a lot about when staff don't have as much power, influence in a situation that can activate a lot of those primal emotions, flight, fright, freeze and once again I am not excusing this person and how they're acting. They are responsible for that.

Speaker 2: 5:57

But as a leader, as a person in the world in general, you can still choose how you want to respond to people. When they are upset and worried, your mood can elevate and you can contribute potentially to the problem growing. Or you can choose to be curious and empathetic and that means that you can be with them calmly and rationally and respond instead of being reactive. Now I'm talking about this rather casually as this, though this were not a very high level skill where you have to be really emotionally intelligent, very self-aware, and if you don't feel that when someone is yelling at you, you can be calm and regulated, this probably isn't an approach that is a good fit for you right now. Maybe it would be better, even in a less extreme situation, to go seek some support yourself and maybe, if the staff is maybe only raising their voice occasionally and you get really scared and you feel like you have to protect your team, this is probably overwhelming to even think about this kind of approach. So just be aware, as a leader, of where your comfort is thinking about doing something like this.

Speaker 2: 7:11

On the flip side, for leaders, I do think this is an incredibly powerful skill to have, and that is to be able to stay calm when others are not, because the reality is you are leading a team of humans. They're human in the workplace. They have lives outside the office. There's going to be times when they're more or less stressed, where they feel like they have the capacity to hold emotions, and when they feel like they don't have that capacity, and as a leader, you are in a unique position where you could actually support them through something that might be actually quite transformational for them to have that kind of help and understanding when they are in a really tough space, and the first thing you can do is staying calm yourself, like I mentioned, and that actually calms other people down.

Speaker 2: 7:57

We mirror behavior. This is a physiological part of us that we mirror that behavior. It's actually the same thing that parents do with their children over and is anxious and is freaking out, the kid is going to cry more. They're going to escalate these emotions. They're mirroring what's happening with the parent, whereas when the parent is calm and rational, it actually helps that toddler calm themselves and regulate themselves. Maybe a basic example this is the same thing that happens to adults. When we are very emotionally up in the air and we have someone who can be calm with us, it helps us calm ourselves. Another thing that'll help them calm themselves is, as much as you can, relaying your understanding of the situation and especially their experience, and the easiest way to do that is paraphrasing and especially if you can reflect on the emotions that they're sharing. So it might sound like I hear you're really mad about the outcome of this project, or it sounds like you're really disappointed about that decision.

Speaker 2: 9:01

Leadership made, feeling understood and heard is a huge piece of being able to regulate and deescalate some of those big emotions, because we're seeking that kind of human connection, and deescalate some of those big emotions because we're seeking that kind of human connection and that puts you on side with them as an ally. And we'll probably go more into this deregulate or re-regulating piece in a future episode, so stay tuned for that. But now we're coming back to this idea of team being allies and, bb, the reason that you believe this person couldn't be an ally to you was because of this perceived sense of not having enough safety. Now, if you are going to move forward believing that this person is safe enough and could be an ally, we need to believe actively that they're not a bad person, and that might sound silly to say, but we very quickly build these pieces in our head about oh, that person's always mad, they must be dot dot dot and we start making these assumptions. Instead, let's think about this idea again that people are mad for a reason. It's because they care about something or they're defending or protecting something. They have a legitimate reason for it. So the piece that we're missing to take this person from scary to ally is really this understanding of why they're not behaving in a healthy way.

Speaker 2: 10:23

If you can assume that someone has good intentions for long enough to reach this understanding, it's probably going to create a lot more allies around you, because we tend to judge ourselves on our good intentions and we judge others on the impact they're having. For all we know, bb. There could be someone out there who's saying I never feel safe about BB, she could never be my ally because of the way she behaves. We actually don't know that right. We all have different experiences of each other. So if you can choose that, though, to say you know, I recognize that this person isn't behaving in a way I want, but I believe that they have some good intention, they have a reason for this behavior, then you can do that. And, bb, we know that you're doing that kind of work. You're working to be a better leader. You have great intentions, and so we need to be able to give that to other people as well.

Speaker 2: 11:15

And, honestly, if the world could do this, if everyone could start off with this assumption of good intentions goes a little bit against how our brain is wired, but it would drastically make the world a different place, and it really will impact how you see your team as allies or not. And just in closing, I do want to mention this is all a really fine balance. You need to balance your personal perception of safety with the actual physical and emotional safety of yourself and your team. You need to make this call based on what the actual impact you see this person is having, and definitely in the first situation and probably in the second, go seek some support. Talk to other people, see what will make the situation better for everyone. Now in the first situation, and probably in the second, go, seek some support. Talk to other people, see what will make the situation better for everyone. Now in the second situation, you also want to balance how much as a leader you can lead by example and be calm and supportive and help get this person to a better, healthier emotional state, without taking too much accountability, too much responsibility for them, because ultimately, how they show up in the long run is their responsibility and if you take too many steps to take an overburden of that responsibility, you're probably gonna perpetuate the situation and not allow them that chance to grow too. So, like I said, it's a very fine balance for all these pieces.

Speaker 2: 12:32

Bibi, I'm super happy that we're going to have a chance to continue this conversation, because I think it'll be a great one. And as a reminder, if you have a great story or question you would like to share on the show, we would love to have it. You can find the link to do that in the description below and just as a reminder. If you do that, I would love to have a follow-up session with you so I can make sure your question's fully answered and give you some extra support that way. Now I do want to celebrate.

Speaker 2: 12:58

This is our 26th episode of the show half a year. I can't believe how quick it's flown by. And just to remind everyone, if you'd like to listen to this show, I'd greatly appreciate it. If you can go to your favorite podcast app and please leave a review or a rating, it really, really helps us out. I want to thank you so much for listening. This is a complex situation. As leaders, we're constantly dealing with complex situations and the best thing we can do is this reflection, is this work to figure out how we can best navigate it. So thank you for listening and learning with me and, as we close, remember to ask yourself what ripples are you going to create this week?

Speaker 1: 13:39

We hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure to subscribe, comment and connect with Leah at meetleahca.