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
47 - Confronting Unethical Behaviour
How do you face a team member who has acted unethically, going against all of your values? Join us as we explore the emotional resilience required to tackle such challenging situations, and how we can prepare ourselves for tough conversations. We focus on how you can ensure that you remain a steadfast and effective leader, even through emotional turmoil.
Are you confident that you can still create empathetic and constructive dialogues in these situations?
If you want to be sure you can be calm and rational, even in stormy waters, you should give this episode a listen!
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 what to do when you have to face someone who's acted totally against your values in an unethical way, and how you compose yourself, how you get through a conversation like that. And in this case, this is actually a situation that already happened, and when I heard about it from a leader I was talking to, I asked if I could use it on the show, because it is such a great example of a challenge that leaders might have to face, unfortunately. So JK's story.
Speaker 2:I'm a high-level manager in HR and I had an employee come to me with a troubling story about an interaction they had where another staff acted badly. The staff did something that goes against all the values I've worked hard to install in this company and something I find personally abhorrent. The employee became emotional during our talk and after hearing everything, I became emotional too. Since the conversation, I've had a hard time trying to figure out how can I address this employee who caused the issue. As I planned for a meeting with him, I was just not sure how I was going to be professional and calm. So thank you for sharing your story, jk, and first of all, I'm so sorry that both the employee that ended up in that situation and also you having to deal with this have to be with this situation. Of course, that's not something anyone wants to experience in the workplace, no matter what it was. If it brings up that emotion, that can be a really, really hard space to be in. So I hope you were able to provide them with a lot of resources and I hope, at the same time, when you were going through the situation and even after you made sure that you were accessing support and resources for yourself as well, because this is not an easy situation to be in, and there's, of course, a lot of components to this situation and, to be fair, I'm not going to talk about a lot of them. There's going to be potentially legal ramifications, policies and procedures, employment issues, corrective action a whole list of things that could come out of this and a lot of people will probably be involved and they're going to ultimately have to make a plan of what happens or happened with this employee, and I'm not going to go into all of that.
Speaker 2:What I really want to focus in today is this emotional experience and how hard it can be as a leader, when we have to talk to someone, when we're really upset with what they did, and of course, it's going to happen on a variety of levels, from smaller issues to larger issues. So let's dive into it. And one of the first challenges with this and one of the reasons this would not maybe be a good topic live for the show is often these kinds of situations require a pretty quick timeline. In this kind of situation, things have already happened and this might need to be addressed really quickly. You might need to just about be running to get that employee that caused the issue into the office to talk to right away, or immediately going to management and starting that ball rolling, and you will definitely need to, if that's the case, if this is a very fast moving thing be able to control your emotional state and just dive into this. So today we'll talk about some of that pre-work we can do or what you could do if you get caught in that situation, because, of course, all of this is easier said than done.
Speaker 2:As soon as emotions come into the mix, we are reacting from a fully different part of our brain, right? Instead of being in this nice prefrontal cortex where everything's calm and logical and organized. We are now operating out of those more base brain functions and they don't allow you to look at perspectives the same way, and so the first thing we want to do, regardless of timeline, regardless of what's happening, is make sure that we are able to calm ourselves, to really get back into this more rational, regulated state, because in our role, we will need to be able to handle this in that way. I think it's totally fine that you were vulnerable in that situation with that employee, that they were so affected, that you were so affected that you cried a little. That's fine. Now it's just making sure we're taking that step back so we can be ready to step in in a different way.
Speaker 2:Maybe this is just some mindful next exercises, maybe you only have a moment, but you can still take that time to take a couple really deep breaths, slow down your nervous system, return to that place of calm, just be in the moment for a while, and you can do all sorts of these things. There's so many on YouTube. There's so many free resources online If you don't even want to think about this that you can plug in for two minutes. Just take that time and let your system calm itself so you can get back into that better brain state. Now, if you immediately have to jump into action, that might be all that you have time for, and if that's the case, it's probably going to have to come up again and again during this conversation that you have with this employee, that you might have to keep thinking to yourself oh, I'm starting to get emotional. I'm going to take those couple deep breaths. I'm starting to get emotional. How do I keep myself a little bit more calm? A little bit more calm and, once again, a bit easier said than done. We all think we're better at this, but of course, the more emotional we get, the harder it is to return to thinking that I need to be calmed down again.
Speaker 2:Right, and so this is a great skill that you can be practicing throughout your life, multiple situations, especially if you can find smaller situations that maybe aren't so emotionally triggering for you. So you're having a stressful day at work? How often can you remember to calm down and reset? You're annoyed with your kids? How can you keep practicing bringing back to that calm space in that situation? Because if you can do that in those situations, it builds up the building blocks, the structure that you can use, so then you can keep calm in these bigger situations and this is such a critical skill in your leadership journey. So I highly encourage everyone to be practicing this a lot, because it does take practice to get there. So that's at a very minimum.
Speaker 2:The biggest thing you need to do is make sure that you are calming your system, staying calm in that meeting as you meet this person, because we're recognizing there's some big emotions going on here. If you have a little bit more time and space before this meeting, maybe you know you need their manager's going to go do something. Someone's got to do some paperwork, someone's got to set something up. Maybe you do have half an hour to yourself, and one of the best things I believe you could do with that time and space is really understanding your own experience. Take some time to reflect on what's happening for you so you can go into this in a better way.
Speaker 2:So first, as you think about this kind of experience, this kind of situation, what are the emotions that come up? For you Sounds like there's a lot of emotion, but can you actually label what they are specifically? Grab a feelings list or feelings wheel and really delve into some of those specifics and then, once you've identified what the feelings are, take a moment to also figure out what some of your unmet needs might be when you think of that kind of situation, what's leading to those feelings. And again you can find needs, wheels or lists of social, emotional, psychological needs that we all have as humans. So if we were to go say, for an extreme case, let's use an extreme example let's say that what was reported to you was a case of sexual harassment. So what comes up for you when you say that, okay, are you mad, are you scared? Do you feel helpless, dismayed? What are some of those emotions? And then what are some of those needs that led to that? Was it an unmet need of safety or control or protection or freedom? When we can reflect on that and really figure out the specifics of those emotions and those needs, it not only gives us obviously a better chance to understand our own experience, but it gives a different way that we can address things and we've talked about this before If you've listened to some of our episodes around communication.
Speaker 2:This is based in nonviolent communication. It gives you this different way to approach things. So, for example, if you, if we're looking at the above example and you were saying that, wow, feeling helpless is really the biggest thing and you recognize that's from an unmet safety need. There are actually things you can do to address that, even as you go in to talk to the staff. Maybe it means that you have another person in the room, someone that's appropriate to the situation. Maybe it means that you space yourself out a little bit differently from this employee, recognizing that if you have this need for safety that's not being met in that meeting, you're only going to escalate again.
Speaker 2:You know that, whereas maybe if what you're feeling is mad because you have this unmet need for, like, control and protection, then you might want to approach things differently. Of course, maybe there's other things you are able to control in this situation or in how you're going to address this person, or maybe a way that you can protect in a way that doesn't feel quite as angry. Right, are there other feelings that could come along with protection that we could lean on, because being aware of why you're acting in a certain way gives you the opportunity to instead decide how to respond to a situation, and this whole process doesn't need to take a ton of time. Just make sure that you have the space to do this and that you can calm yourself down before going into this, because if you are still emotionally elevated and you're trying to go through this process, it's just not going to work. So, once again, we're going to take that time, we're going to be mindful, calm If we have the opportunity to take this time to reflect, and then we're looking to go into our meeting and as we're approaching this sense of meeting this person, what do we need to focus on?
Speaker 2:And I think the biggest thing unfortunately, as hard as this might sound is that we really need to know more perspectives of this story, because when we become very emotionally connected to something that's happened, especially if we're triggered by it, we're going to have a very strong bias to whoever told us that first story that we felt. There's all these emotions around, right? So as you go into this conversation, you are going to need to try as much as possible to approach it with a fresh mind, this idea that maybe we don't know the whole story and in this case we could be talking about something that's a very serious problem, right? If it was, for example, like that sexual harassment piece, maybe it's a really big issue, but this can happen even in small situations. When we hear from someone on our team, maybe about someone else's behavior, we jump to all these conclusions way before we explore what happened and then we talk to people but just to get a confirmation of these ideas or the bias that we already have. So, even for small situations, if you're hearing things, making sure that you're trying to approach it all with that open mind, which will be easier when you're calm, when it's not as big of an emotional thing, because of course, this is all complicated by the idea that people experience and interpret things in completely different ways and we have no idea what that internal experience is like.
Speaker 2:You could have a situation that's a bit more simple, like a co worker gives a compliment on someone else's outfit and it comes from a very well intentioned space. Maybe they thought they were being quite friendly, but that person could take it as some sort of backhanded compliment, insult, or as some sort of sexual harassment or as being just inappropriate based on their previous experience and their previous interactions and interpretation. And there becomes this very fine line between listening to and understanding someone's experience and recognizing it was true for them it had an impact, and balancing this against someone else's experiences and intentions. And to be clear, I'm not saying that if someone does something that's inappropriate and says, oh, I didn't mean to, I had a good intention, it means they get out of jail free. It's not just a that's it. Just that these perspectives and situations can be complex and one of the most important things we need to do is really seek that understanding.
Speaker 2:Perspectives and situations can be complex and one of the most important things we need to do is really seek that understanding. If you can go into a meeting like this to really prioritize that you want to understand better, you want to understand a perspective better and give the grace of they had some sort of reason to do this, hopefully good intentioned and that will feel very different to you than if you approach this feeling like this person's already an enemy that has done something bad that I need to defend against. And not to say that their actions will end up being appropriate or that their intentions will justify anything at all, just saying that that's a very different way to think about this as you go in and will probably leave you feeling a little bit better if you can approach it from that idea. The positive on the other side from this, of course, is that when someone feels that their perspective is understood and you're able to talk about it in more of that way, instead of if they get the sense that you are defensive or already against them, then you can also help them tie that whatever happened to maybe a behavioral change. Tie that to understanding what happened, what they did and what impact they had, so maybe they can change that behavior and move forward in a more positive way.
Speaker 2:This all being said, this is only just touching at how complex, how big this kind of experience can be.
Speaker 2:There will be a lot on your plate from a logistical side and from your emotional experience, and I hope, if you are potentially going into a situation like this, this has given you a couple ideas of things to keep in mind just to get yourself into that, into a good space, so you can really listen and create something better from what's probably a really bad situation, create the best outcome possible.
Speaker 2:So, jk, thank you so much for letting me use this story. If you have any sort of thing coming up like this for you and you want to talk more about it, I would love to chat, so please feel free to reach out If you have a question or a thought that you would like to share with the show, we would love to have it. You can find the contact information, the page for that, in the description. So please do share your story with us and I want to thank you so much for listening, for learning, for considering these things. So hopefully, if you do end up in a complex situation like this, you feel just that bit more comfortable and a bit more able to handle something like it. And as we close, remember to ask yourself what kind of ripples am I going to create this week?
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure to subscribe, comment and connect with Leah at meetleahca.