Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink
Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect, starting with your team, going out to the organization, and even out into to 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 are creating the ripples you want.
If you would like your questions answered on the show, please share your story here: https://allthrive.ca/share-your-story/
To join the show live, go to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/
Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink
37 - Coping with a Harmful Leader
What kind of impact is your leader having on your mental health? And how does that then affect the people that you lead? In this episode, we unpack the complex challenges of loving a role, but feeling suffocated by a toxic superior. We underscore the significance of external support, while focusing on addressing the underlying environment that is causing stress. Finally, we dive into learning new ways to address a leader who is acting in a harmful way, in order to create a better situation.
Do you know what to do if your leader's actions are actively damaging your well-being?
If you want to be able to navigate those relationships, and make the decisions that are best for you and your team, 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 12:00pm MST. Please join us to get answers to your leadership questions! https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/
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:Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink. Today, we are going to be talking about dealing with burnout when you're in leadership and when you're getting a negative impact from your own leader, and I think this is just so important for all leaders to be aware of for themselves and for their teams, and so we can make sure that we're having that kind of impact that we want. Fh writes in with her story. She says I am feeling trapped and burnt out in my role. I was so excited when I got this position and it really is perfect for me in so many ways. It pays well, every day brings interesting new projects, and the team I lead is great. All that being said, I don't think I can deal with my boss anymore. He is completely toxic. He clearly doesn't care about me and spends a lot of time micromanaging and cutting me down. My mental health has taken a big hit and I spend so much of my time outside of work just trying to recover enough to get to the next day. I don't want to leave my dream role, but I don't think I can take it anymore. Thank you so much for sharing your story, fh, and I'm so sorry that you're having to go through this. Not only are you dealing with the emotional impact on yourself of your boss's behavior, but now even having to question if you can potentially keep this dream role that really seems important to you, and I first of all want to say that you're not alone.
Speaker 2:New research is showing that 70% of people are saying that their leader has more of an impact on their mental health than any caring professionals their doctors and their therapists and when I heard that, I was very saddened, of course, but actually, unfortunately, not surprised. After all, usually we're seeking these professionals when we're already having challenges therapists, doctors we're already in this challenging situation. We're looking for solutions. Meanwhile, your boss could be negatively, actively contributing to all these poor experiences that you're having every single day. Now, ideally in the workplace. Is the other way right? Because it also applies to 70% of people. Some of those people might be positively mentally impacted by their boss more than their therapist or their doctor, and of course, that's what we'd prefer boss more than their therapist or their doctor, and of course, that's what we'd prefer. And really creating this environment that either stresses you out or lifts you up is something that leaders have so much of an impact on, and that's why so much of my work with leaders is focused on making sure that they're creating these environments where the ripple is this positive impact on mental health. Is this positive impact on mental health, not this negative one? Because, as a leader, that's part of what you end up creating. Now that, all being said, fh, that was just context. That's not your specific situation.
Speaker 2:So let's start by talking about what you can do for yourself, and I'll start with the basics, which you might already be doing some of, and then I'm going to go some more in depth and expand on some of these in ways you might not have thought of yet. Even though, as we talked about, it might not, let's say, fully counter your boss's actions, I certainly hope that you have sought or are seeking out some sort of support outside of work, whatever kind of professional that is, and this is regardless of whether you choose to stay or you choose to go a new direction and pursue another job. I think that, honestly, everyone should have this opportunity to be able to talk about a challenge, experience, to explore that, and so they can learn and grow from it and feel healthier and move forward. So, whether that's someone in private practice, you can look into if your workplace has an employee family assistance plan. There are all sorts of options maybe free from your health care or sliding scale if finances are a bit tougher and it might take a while to get into those, but making sure that you are seeking some sort of help that will help you process this. I would really recommend that and if you've already done that, fantastic, I'm really glad you have that support.
Speaker 2:And, of course, also looking into the rest of your life, seeing what kind of people help decrease your stress in your interactions with them. What kind of activities can you do that decrease stress, make you feel more calm? And if there are the opposites of those obviously people that are adding stress to your life, or activities that are adding stress to your life are there ways to mitigate or manage those things? Now that I've said those two things because those are the common advice that you would get in this kind of situation I'm immediately going to follow them with two counterpoints. And one is you want to be aware of your own perception around this piece of self-care that you're doing.
Speaker 2:Some people do all of these things. They start trying and they're really working on countering the stress they're facing, and it's just not enough. And they can get quite upset with themselves, thinking I must have failed at self-care because I'm not feeling better. And part of this is because our society puts this huge emphasis on self-care and mental health being so individual that it's up to you to manage your own mental health. So of course you're going to feel like you're a failure if you cannot manage that, and I really want to reiterate that. Of course we all have a personal responsibility for how we show up and how we take care of ourselves. But putting this entire onus on you that you should be able to take certain steps and instantly feel better is not healthy. So remembering to be gentle with yourself about that.
Speaker 2:And that plays it a little bit into this other counterpoint, which is making sure that you're not so involved doing this personal work and this self-care that you don't talk about the environment that it comes from. So maybe you start seeing a therapist and now you're exercising every day and you're meditating every day and you're journaling every day and you feel like you can get through this now. But every moment that you are not at work, you are spent dealing with the stress and trying to make sure that you are feeling better from work so the next day you can go back. I'm going to say that if you have to commit your entire life to healing from the stress from work so you can get through the next day, this is not a great long-term solution. Sure, you can do it, but ultimately what's going to happen is you're going to lose out on other parts of your life that you would have liked to engage with but maybe didn't have the time because you're taking so much recovery time from work and in the long run, you're going to feel really burned out from this.
Speaker 2:This can have really bad long term consequences environmental factors in the workplace that are affecting this. So what can be done about it? Of course, if we're looking at that environmental piece and, like you said, one of your options is to leave and there is nothing wrong with leaving a bad situation it's not some sort of failure on your part if you don't feel equipped to deal with the situation or that you decide that you don't want to deal with the situation. You need to take care of yourself, and I've talked about this in previous episodes, but I do want to reiterate that it's critical for leaders like you yourself already said you lead a team to be able to manage their self-care enough in order to be regulated and responsive and present with your team. And if you don't feel that you can do that in a way that you can really be there feeling not so stressed that you can't handle those pieces, then I would really recommend maybe looking at something else.
Speaker 2:Because when leaders don't do the self-care, when they're not able to be that regulated, it's actually unethical. It really is the way that you treat your staff, the way that you're trying to support them to help solve their problems. When you're that level of stress you can't manage it, you actually end up negatively impacting your team and I can say this from previous experience and from a lot of studies that are done. It's really hard to then be able to support your team fully. So, making sure that if this is a situation you need to leave so you can be healthy enough to lead a team, please consider that. I'm also going to add that sometimes people you need to leave so you can be healthy enough to lead a team. Please consider that.
Speaker 2:I'm also going to add that sometimes people feel powerless to leave a situation like this, like you can't leave because this is the only job that will pay this well, or this is the only organization that does this work, or this is the only position that will give me all of these opportunities. And sometimes people conflate, not wanting to face a specific consequence, which there obviously would be an impact from choosing to leave, with not having the power to do so. And really the point that will come for you personally is when you feel that that consequence is now better than the thing that you were leaving from right. So if the consequence is better than all the stress that you're dealing with from your boss, the consequence could be a decrease in pay, or having to pick a less interesting position, or maybe having to relocate. Those are all consequences that could happen, but you always do have that choice, and so you need to be weighing these on your mind on what makes sense. With that all said, fh, let's say that you decide to try to stay, that this is important to you and you want to tough it out, see if things can get better.
Speaker 2:There's a couple things you can do with your boss to improve the situation you can listen, of course, to some of our previous episodes about feedback and to really navigate that relationship when you're in a lower power situation. And just because you are in this position that has less influence, obviously, than your boss does, doesn't mean that you have no power and it doesn't mean that you can't influence his behavior as well. Right In the same way, when leaders are managing staff who are aggressive or passive aggressive or passive or unengaged or fearful whatever negative behavior they're seeing they can counteract that by being responsive and respectful, by repairing harm if it happens and really taking responsibility for the health of that relationship. That shifts those people to a better place. In a similar way, though it may be harder, people who are in that staff position can also take leaders who are unaware or reactionary, disrespectful, manipulative, self-serving. And if these staff can actually shift that by being resilient and collaborative, trusting, assertive and empowered, so you have the ability to help move this behavior in a better way. Of course it sounds easier than it is, but let's talk about a few ways that we can do that to make a difference. And of course, in the ideal world, it would be the leaders taking these steps, recognizing they're having a negative impact and being more, like I said, responsive and taking responsibility for that health of the relationship. Since they're not doing it. We're going to take it on as the staff and really still work to get our needs met.
Speaker 2:And I want to start by saying and this might be hard to believe it is for a lot of people is that most leaders I have met have really good intentions, even the ones that are not behaving well, and they might get clouded. We know that leaders lose empathy. This is actually a physiological change that happens when they've been in leadership positions for a really long time. We've talked about this in other episodes. You can go back and listen the leader, your leader, might be dealing poorly with some of their own personal challenges. Right, they're not ethically self caring for themselves. They may be reactive due to their own trauma that they haven't faced or unresolved issues, but even with all of that, at a deep level, people ultimately want to do a good job. They want to support other people and generally the biggest problem is they have no idea. They just haven't fully connected the negative impact they're having on people with their actions.
Speaker 2:So one of the things you can do to really change this is you open this door for understanding, and there's two ways we can address this. The first one is really shifting the feedback that you described as him cutting you down. It's a type of feedback not a good one, but it is a type of feedback, and I don't know exactly what he says to you. But we're going to use an example that he regularly says you're stupid. And that would hurt, that would suck to hear. I would hate it if a boss, every day or every couple days, told me I was stupid. So what we're going to do is try to help him, from our position, reframe how he's expressing himself and what he hopes for, so this feedback changes. So let's say you do something that he doesn't like and he calls you stupid. So let's try to do this a different way.
Speaker 2:So, as calmly as you can, you can ask him what would you have preferred I would have done in this situation? Now you also mentioned he'd been micromanaging. If he's been micromanaging, he probably has a pretty big idea. He'd probably have lots to say to you about what you could have done, and you want to keep asking questions, be engaged with what he says. So what specific behaviors would be helpful? What types of situations would I use this for in the future? You know, all of those kinds of questions that really, really clarify understanding here and at the end you calmly reiterate, paraphrase what he said. So you really show your understanding and you're confirming that it's right. You can even paraphrase what emotions you might have heard or sensed in that situation is really helpful. So it seems like this is really frustrating to you. So you like it when I take these steps, so you're really bringing all of those pieces together and then you want to close by thanking him for explaining it to you so you understand his perspective better.
Speaker 2:One of these things that happens is people get upset because they don't feel understood or agreed with and they perceive that as a kind of rejection or even disrespect. Now, disagreement or not understanding is certainly not disrespect or rejection. But even if that is not the case, we can mitigate this perceived thing that they have by really focusing on this understanding, by really developing that. So now you've really worked on making sure that you understand your boss, his perspective, what's happening, and the second part is you want to open up his understanding of you and of course, you want to do this carefully and slowly, but you want him to ultimately get to a point where he can understand your experience and your emotions. And so start small.
Speaker 2:So I've really, maybe after he said all this, you've had this question time. I really appreciate you taking time to explain a different way that I could have handled things. That because that helps me what to do. Can you continue to do this instead of using the word stupid? So just keep it very simple. You're not saying I hate it when you use the word stupid, you're not getting emotional about this, but you're adding this piece that says I prefer A over B. When he does do that explanation, keep thanking him, keep doing this more and more times.
Speaker 2:Further. When this is developed a little bit, maybe he's doing better, but he's still using the term using stupid. You can actually say more directly hey, look, I feel hurt when I'm called stupid and I could really use some compassion or understanding with that. Would you be willing to choose a different way to say that? Or would you be willing to continue to give me more of these explanations instead? Because when we actively share those feelings, those needs, that more personal piece once again, once you've practiced this a bit and it feels more safe, we get a different response. Right, he somehow might not have realized that when he calls you stupid, you are feeling that or are willing to say that, that it's that important to you, and then you can start discussing solutions, because you're together and you're in understanding on this, and you can use this for any behavior.
Speaker 2:If he's constantly micromanaging, ask him what he feels he needs to see in order to trust your work. Ask if there would be a better way to do check-ins, maybe mention that you feel frustrated and it makes it hard to focus when he's constantly checking in and now you're creating this understanding you guys can move forward with the solution together. Ultimately, this is really kind of training, or helping him see this new way of understanding himself, of understanding you, and then you become a team that's working together to do better, to work together better, to solve these problems better. And I will say, though, if his behavior, if you try to do this and his behavior is at the point of shouting at you, cursing at you, he absolutely refuses to answer or do things another way, or maybe even uses this to belittle you more, in my opinion, that would be a situation that is, you're not going to solve that with your skills and capacity and power dynamic in this role. So that would be where I'd really consider looking at maybe other options or going to another person in your company that might be able to help. Be very careful with this. If it really is turning to be a worse situation, look at your options. But generally what happens when people start employing these skills is they see a change in behavior. They see this shift to something better, where there is more empathy, where there is more understanding.
Speaker 2:So, fh, I hope that gave you some good ideas and that you have some concept of some new ways that you might move forward and not burn out quite so hard, and I'm really looking forward to continuing our discussion. And as a reminder to our listeners, if you have a story, a question about leadership you've been burning to ask, I would love to hear it, and so please feel free to use that link in the description below and share it with us, and then, as a thank you, I provide an extra free session just so we can make sure we answer the question and as a way of saying thank you. This show is available in podcast form If you prefer that. It comes out Friday mornings. So please use the link below and download and enjoy from wherever you like to listen to your podcasts, and I want to thank you so much for listening today, for learning with me, for finding new ways to adjust to these crazy pieces of your life. And, as we close, remember to ask yourself what ripples are you going to create this week?
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure to subscribe, comment and connect with Leah at meetleahca.