Breaking the Cycle: Building a Workplace That Prioritizes Belonging feat. Nicholas Whitaker

Is your workplace truly inclusive, or just going through the motions? In this episode of Taking Back Monday, Nicholas Whitaker, co-founder of the Changing Work Collective, breaks down why belonging and psychological safety are the foundation for thriving teams. He shares his own experiences with burnout, toxic leadership, and the journey toward creating workplaces where people feel seen, valued, and supported.

We dive into how leaders can develop the self-awareness needed to create real cultural shifts and why it's never too late to start building a healthier work environment. Whether you're a seasoned leader or an employee looking to make an impact, this conversation offers practical strategies to foster connection, empathy, and a sense of belonging at work.

Key Takeaways:

• Why belonging and psychological safety are game-changers for teams.
• How self-awareness can transform leadership.
• The importance of being intentional in remote and hybrid workplaces.
• Practical ways to build a culture that prioritizes human connection.

If you're ready to break the cycle of toxic work environments and build something better, this episode is for you.

It's time to say "goodbye" to the Sunday Scaries.

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Transcript

Alyssa Nolte: 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to Taking Back Monday. I am so excited that you've decided to say goodbye to the Sunday Scaries and hello to more meaningful work. And I am so excited to introduce you to my new friend, Nicholas. Welcome,

Nicholas Whitaker: 0:11

how you doing? It's good to see you.

Alyssa Nolte: 0:13

So I have to tell you, I was doing some scrolling on your LinkedIn and It's one of those places where I just feel like, you know, we've never met before. I've never met in person, but when I see your content on LinkedIn, it just makes me feel like you have such a happy, sunny, positive outlook on life. Like, am I, am I right? Or, or is it all for play for the, for the

Nicholas Whitaker: 0:32

well, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I try to, you know, I think that there's, uh, actually I was just watching a video by LeVar Burton this morning that actually, uh, he was talking to, I think it was Samuel L. Jackson, um, or no, sorry, it's Lawrence Fishburne. He was actually talking about how like most of the world knows him as this like happy, Warm, friendly person. Um, but if people really knew how much rage he has underneath all of that, you know, they'd have a fuller picture of who he is as a person. And it really resonated with me. Cause I mean, yeah, like I try to be optimistic. I try to be positive. I'm, I'm, uh, forward looking. And there's also life and there's also the struggles that we have and just getting through the day on a day to day basis. So I think it's a yes. And I think it's, you know, there's a version of me that's positive and wanting to really encourage people to, to reach for positivity and hope. Uh, and then there's the part of me that, you know, struggles with everybody along with everybody else, just to kind of get through the day sometimes, and is really excited that today is Friday because it's been a big week.

Alyssa Nolte: 1:31

Absolutely. Absolutely. So you're the co founder of this thing called the changing work collective. What is that?

Nicholas Whitaker: 1:38

Yeah, thank you. Yeah. So the changing work collective is really a culmination of myself, my co founder, scott shoot, my co founder, amy serene and all of our experiences that we had working in corporate america over the last couple of decades. And we all kind of had different experiences, but one unifying theme that we had was Was that there's these massive gaps in leadership. There's these massive gaps in a sense of belonging and psychological safety, uh, that creates poor outcomes for people at all different levels of their employment. And what we really wanted to do was create an environment and create a community that brings people together to help. Build solutions to allow work to be a better place for as many people as possible. So right now we have about 650 people that are in the community coaches, consultants, facilitators, subject matter experts, the people who are actually going into organizations and doing team development or leadership training. Uh, in about a month, we're recording this today on August 2nd of 2024. In about a month, we're gonna be opening up the community to two other areas, one specifically for leaders that are interested in learning how to be more self aware, more conscious leaders. Uh, 1 for employees who are interested in being in community with other people who understand that the workplace could be better and we're looking for solutions and ways to support each other through that. And then eventually, we're going to be opening up another section for the future leaders of these workplaces, students and educators to help them. Have the tools and the resources and the frameworks to hopefully make a more conscious and more psychologically safe place for everybody to work in the future.

Alyssa Nolte: 3:10

I love that. And it's, it's so in line with, you know, what we're trying to do here at taking back Monday before we started recording, you know, you kind of asked me like, what is, what is the ethos? What is the purpose behind what we're trying to do here? And, you know, I hadn't even had a chance to talk to you about it yet. And we really have a lot of alignment here. If you've listened to the podcast before, you've heard me talk about the importance of like understanding your intentions and, and not just like a goal setting, right. But the why behind the what, and as you're thinking through how you're building community, what is the most important factor for someone who, who knows they need to work on their culture, but isn't quite sure where to start?

Nicholas Whitaker: 3:48

Gosh, that's a powerful question. Well, for me, you know, it comes back. Well, there's a couple of things that you just mentioned, you know, cause I think goal setting goals are tricky. Right. You know, I think goals are really good for like short term engagement, short term strategy. I like, um, James Clear's approach to goal setting. He, you know, he talks about goals as being really valuable, but really what you should be thinking about is more systems and ways of being that align with, you know, eventually where your goals will actually end up. So, you know, when I think about building community and when I think about kind of creating an environment for like, let's say for leaders, for example, I've got, I've had this question before. Like, I post content all the time on LinkedIn. That's really kind of, um, more geared towards employees talking about my own personal experience with mental health and well being in the workplace, the struggles that I had and I have. Employees reach out to me all the time and say, thank you so much for sharing your story. It really resonated with me. I'm experiencing something really, really similar to that. It's good to feel that I'm not alone. So there's a component there of what I'm trying to build within this community to allow people to know that they're not alone. They can actually connect with other people in meaningful ways. But also I get messages from leaders from time to time where they're like, Oh, my gosh. I think your definition of toxic leadership is something that I've actually experienced. I think I might be part of the problem. Can you help? And I think the place that most leaders need to start with is what allows somebody to even reach out and ask that question. Awareness. It's the ability to recognize, Oh, I might be impacting other people in a negative way. I might not be able to be the type of leader that I want to be because I don't have the skills or the resources of the community to be able to help me move in that direction. So I think all of it starts with self awareness, and I think it starts with a humility and an understanding that we can improve. And that doesn't necessarily mean that we're a bad person. It means that there's skill sets and frameworks and ways of being, uh, Strategies that we need to think about in order to be the type of leader that we want to be.

Alyssa Nolte: 5:43

I want to touch in on a specific point you made. You use the word skill a lot, and I agree. It is a skill. I think it's not that you're a bad person because you're a bad leader. You're just not equipped to be so. We, we do training on HR policies and we do training on how to turn on our computers and access the software that we need to access. We do training on sales techniques. But in the millions or billions of dollars that's spent on learning development, how much is spent on truly developing you as an individual person to be a great leader? And so I think that looking at it as a skill and not a personality trait, I think is really

Nicholas Whitaker: 6:22

Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, just to kind of big piggyback on that a little bit. I think there's statistics out there I've read recently that say like the average leader, the average manager does not get formal leadership training until five years after they've been promoted into leadership. And you think,

Alyssa Nolte: 6:37

right? At that point, it's almost like too late. The damage is

Nicholas Whitaker: 6:41

And there's a wake of like, you know, damage has probably been done, not out of maliciousness or not out of like, you know, actively trying to harm other people, but just out of a lack of knowledge and a lack of, um, understanding. So, you know, I do think it's a skill. I do think, you know, Conscious leadership or just leadership broadly is something that can be taught. It can be instructed, but it requires the will to do so. It requires somebody to have the self awareness to understand that, Hey, maybe I'm not just a natively born awesome leader. And particularly these days in the marketplace of work and how. Things have changed so dramatically. COVID was a big part of this. There's this new awareness from people that like, you know, there's things outside of work that matter and there's, there's ways of being at work that matter that they're not able to express. And there's environments that are maybe harmful that, you know, People are maybe starting to stand up and say, like, I deserve better. Um, and they're seeking, they're seeking resources, you know, and I, and I think it's both for leaders and I think it's also for just the average employee who maybe might be aspiring to be a leader, but, um, like, how do we find the community? How do we find the resources and the skillsets that we need to be able to navigate just this chaotic time that we're all moving through?

Alyssa Nolte: 7:54

So many things I could go on in there. So let's start with knowing our people as people. So I work fully remote. I've been at home since COVID basically, and we just kind of never went back. And one of the things that I, I talk to people about is pre COVID. COVID, I would walk through the office and I would kind of yak with my, my team. And I would know who was going on vacation that weekend and what their plans were. And like all of those kinds of social niceties that you just do naturally when you're in person. Now, my meetings are also tactical. Like we are there for an agenda. There's a purpose. There's very little BS time. And I, I think that that's hurt my ability to relate to my team. Cause I only know them as the doers. Not necessarily as the people they are outside of their nine to five. Like, how do we get

Nicholas Whitaker: 8:42

Yeah, well, I think your name is something really important there. And I think it's particularly devastating for earlier career employees. You know, when you're early in your career, community is so important. Having that network. It's the same thing. I talk to people that are just like still in undergrad or in grad school. It's like the whole purpose is, well, part of the purpose is to go get an education, a bigger purpose is to build a network, to open up opportunities for you later on, it's the same thing early on Work experience. So there's no water cooler to convene around. You know, if there's no, none of those, what they call like the extemporaneous, like interactions that you might have in the hallways, then you have to bring intentionality into it. It has to be a very culturally oriented thing. So, for example, within my own. Company changing work. You know, we have three co founders. We're all remote to in different States and are two different towns in California and I'm here in Colorado. So the beginnings of a lot of our meetings, it's a quick check in. So, okay. Like what's your energy levels like today? You know, or like, Hey, what's up for you today? You know, and it's a brief check in and it's not BS. I think it's, it's very easy for us to call it something flippant like that. It's actually the more important part of that, that interaction, that connection, which allows for creativity and allows for innovation, you know, I just got off of a meeting before I joined this call with my, with my colleagues. And one of my colleagues, you know, they led the call with saying, look, like I'm just feeling a lot of fields today. Nothing's wrong, nothing happened, but I'm just, I'm just showing up with this feeling. And it's like, great. Welcome. Is there anything we can do to support you? Uh, just being here is like support enough. You know, I get uplifted by being with both of you and like the fact that we've been able to create something like that, that's really pure and, Honest that someone can show up however they are showing up that day and it's accepted and we can get work done is a testament. I think to the, to the, the small micro moments that we've created through all of our engagements with the basically say you have permission to be yourself. You're enough as you show up.

Alyssa Nolte: 10:38

Right. Being human at work is unfortunately a fairly novel idea.

Nicholas Whitaker: 10:43

Yeah.

Alyssa Nolte: 10:44

Yeah, that's, it's too bad that it's a novel idea. I want to circle back to your comment about, An early in career person working from home. I, I had this conversation with someone who really wanted a remote work out of job out of college. They were like, that's so glamorous. You get to work from home. I'm like, I mean, it's really not. I sit at a desk all day on camera, but you know, one of the things that I realized is there's no, like what I'll call, like, bullpen osmosis, because when you're in a room with a bunch of people, you sit in cubicles or whatever, and someone shouts a question across the bullpen and gets an answer across the bullpen, you pick up that knowledge, whether you're actively a part of the conversation in this virtual environment. If I'm not invited to the call, then I might not be learning through osmosis. I might not even know to ask the question or to pick up this skill or to, to learn the way. that we all learned because we got to see what other people were doing and see what was working for them and kind of piggyback on their success or failures.

Nicholas Whitaker: 11:41

Yeah. And I think, I think what you're naming there again, it's like, it's a very subtle component of the workplace, but I think underlying what you're saying there too, it's a greater understanding of the culture and the vibrancy of the company writ large, you know, like one of the things I think is really valuable about going into an office. And let me just preface this by saying is that I have always preferred working from home. Like I was a freelancer for a long time before I actually worked inside of a corporation. And even when I worked inside of corporation, I much preferred working at home, but I was. 15 years older than most of my client, my colleagues. So I had already had a lot of that in person interaction and engagement in other ways, but what I really valued about being able to come into the office and being able to engage with people in an intentional way, it was like I had a better and clearer understanding of the company, you know, what the culture was like, you know, what the mission was, you know, that stuff gets dripped out and in individual meetings, it gets dripped out in the way that the, Office is arranged. It's the cultural underpinning of a lot of like what we experience when you go to work. That's really hard to replicate in a series of back to back zoom calls. But I do think that there are asynchronous ways and other other formats that where you can actually still kind of foster this type of engagement and interaction. With these types of environments where you're able to go into work at an early stage in your career, there's that kind of background radiation of like, uh, connection and understanding and then like, uh, team building that occurs. It's really hard to do if you're solely remote. And I think just to kind of summarize what I was saying, you know, I think it's really important to be intentional. If you have a hybrid. Workforce, if you have a remote workforce, those little drips of connection, those little drips of culture that you get, where, you know, you speak into what the values of the company are, you connect with each other, meaningful ways at the beginning of meetings, you have asynchronous platforms, maybe it's slack, maybe it's some other internal tool where you can actually get more exposure to the broader. Zeitgeist of what's going on within the company. I think it's really critical to find ways to build that in. It's not going to replicate exactly what you would get if you went into an office. But I think when you're intentional about that and you're naming, these are the values of our company. Here's how we like to interact with, engage in with each other. Here's what it means to have the same mentorship or other types of connection. Um, I think it can approximate a lot of what you would get in an office. Um, but it comes down to that intentionality for that to really work correctly.

Alyssa Nolte: 14:08

I love that you use the word intentionality specifically. It's, I think you have to be 10 times more intentional if you're going to have anyone on your remote team. And maybe it's being hyperbolic, but I feel like also if you have a hybrid team where you have some people that are out of the office and like working from home and some people who work in the office, I think you have to be 20 times more intentional and trying to make sure that those people who are in that remote work environment aren't disadvantaged or, or don't have an opportunity to really build those

Nicholas Whitaker: 14:34

Yeah, that's right. You know, and I think for me, this all comes back to 2 words psychological 3 psychological safety and belonging. You know, if you're really orienting towards psychological safety and belonging, then yeah, you can get all of those parts of what you would have within an office setting in a similar type of a setting. If it's just remote or hybrid, but it does require a lot more work. And I think this is where a lot of leaders fall down. And a lot of employees fall down is they don't realize that it does require that additional degree of care and intention and attention to make sure that you're really connecting with people authentically. And it doesn't just become this transactional thing. I think that's what starts to feed into lack of connection, lack of a sense of coherence within an organization and companies and start to treat their employees as transactional chips, just to be moved around as opposed to like whole humans. And then we send it and tend to internalize that as well. Like the engagements that we have with each other become super transactional. And it's like, I'm just here to try to get my work done and get whatever I need out of this person, as opposed to like connecting in meaningful ways that builds and fosters connection.

Alyssa Nolte: 15:42

Absolutely. So let's, let's take it back. Was there like a triggering event or some kind of milestone that really got you interested in the idea of psychological safety and belonging at work? What was your origin story?

Nicholas Whitaker: 15:56

Well, it was a series and I think this is what happens with a lot of people. It was a series of things. Um, you know, I had been anti establishment before I joined a big establishment. Like I was a freelancer. I was, I would say practically an anarchist for a large part of my childhood, uh, and early, early adulthood. Uh, it was in the punk scene. I was in the rave scene. Like, so like the idea of going in and being a corporate employee, it was Antithetical to like my worldview and I had an opportunity. I was given this opportunity to freelance, uh, for a big company, Google, and I took advantage of it. I was convinced by my friends to go in and do this, even though it was very much not. Kind of the, the orientation that they would have expected. Like, yeah, you have to do this. You got the opportunity, go for it. So I went in and I did it and I was like, okay, I'm going to do this for a couple of years and see how it goes. And I'll probably go back to my, my business again and call it a day. And I blinked and 13 years went by. And during that 13 years, what happened was I went from this. You know, young, you know, 30 something year old person to a middle aged man in his forties who experienced burnout two or three times experienced toxic leadership and toxic managers, bullies, uh, all the worst parts of, you know, Uh, corporation, I had the benefit of actually engaging with and experiencing as well as some of the best leadership I've ever experienced in my entire life over a course of 13 years and so many different teams, so many different leaders. I got a really good spread of what's available there. And I think for me, it was a gradual awakening and a gradual opening up to this notion, which I had known originally when I went in that these environments are designed to work for a certain group of people, a certain type of person. Transcribed And if you're not willing to be cutthroat, if you're not willing to toss other people under the bus, if you're not really just gaining, you're not showing up to work just for the possibility of gaining recognition or award or promotion, well, then it, It becomes really difficult to be successful within those environments. And there's a lot of research out here that kind of talks about the people who get targeted by workplace bullying, the people who get targeted by, um, trying to get managed out and not the people who are always like, you know, low performers, it's actually quite the opposite. It is the high performers. It's the people who are empathetic, the people who are compassionate and interested in engaging with people in meaningful ways because it shines a light on the politics that happens within organizations and it threatens Little hierarchies or the fiefdoms that people have created for themselves. So it was a sequence of things that occurred to me, both a need for me to become more self aware me to become more, um, holistic in my approach to self care and mental health. Uh, it was getting into a couple of environments that just triggered me in just the exact kind of way, uh, that. Cause a mental health collapse. And I ended up taking about three and a half months off to heal. And then I came back to a low performance rating. Uh, and, uh, and basically somebody just telling me like, Hey, just get over it. Don't take it personally. You're just like the one that was chosen for the poor, poor from. Poor performance rating this, this quarter, somebody had to take it. And because you were out and because you weren't available, like it made the most sense. And I was like, this affects my pay. This affects, you know, my ability to get advancement. Like there's just so many reasons why this is wrong. And there's a term that I've learned recently is called moral injury. Uh, there's a guy I actually interviewed in my own podcast, Dean Yates. He wrote a book called line in the sand that talks about moral injury and how that shows up within the workplace. But it's basically a disconnect between your values and the values that are being demonstrated by the company. And I think for me, that was the first bell that rang. It was like, okay, not only is this wrong ethically, not only is it materially impacting my own wellbeing, but also the wellbeing of my family and dozens of other people that I've talked to that have gone through the same experience. But it also doesn't have to be this way. Right. There's plenty of research that shows that if you treat people with humility and humanity and you treat people, uh, as whole people, you'll have more productive teams, you'll have more innovative teams. And, you know, I've just never been good at sitting still and not being, you know, being quiet, you know? So I was like, okay, if I'm going to do anything moving forward, like I want to help alleviate human suffering at scale. Right. I want to help other people not have to go through the same experiences that I did. And me and my co founders basically identified like, well, the place where we can move the needle furthest is working with leaders, helping them be more self aware, helping them get the skills that they need, that they're not getting from their organizations. Um, and then by curating and collecting the best and the brightest who are actually going and doing this work of helping change work from the inside out is probably the best use of my time and attention. So that was a long journey, but that's how I ended up here.

Alyssa Nolte: 20:57

so cool. And you made a comment about how People are, you know, don't have to be like one low performer, right? You don't have to grade people on a curve, but that you can have a group of high performers. So not only is leadership, training, and, and treating your workers like people and everything that we've talked about the right thing to do, but it's profitable,

Nicholas Whitaker: 21:16

Yeah, exactly. You know, and it's, there's decades of data that go back that actually show this. And I think if you go all the way back, you know, Milton Friedman, the Friedman doctrine, if you haven't heard it, it's a great Google search, it's a bit of a wormhole, but basically Milton Friedman spoke about what is, what is the purpose of a corporation? Like what's it for? And essentially he was positioning it as being the purpose of a corporation is to make a profit. That's it. Peter Drucker years later, talked a little bit about it slightly differently. He said, yeah, it's about making a profit, but it's also serving the needs of the customer. Then say 20, 30 years later, there's what came up as like, basically called the triple bottom line people. Profit. And at that time, it was also the environment. And it was like, this is really what could be the purpose of a corporation. This is what we could do with this entity in a capitalist system is really help. Not only make money, which is great. We're in a capitalist system. We should be making money and it's fine. But what if it was also a place where people could be. You know, fruitful where they could be innovative, where they could grow as individuals. And what if it also helped the environment and the communities around where this company existed? And I think we've gotten confused along the way somewhere, right? And like the most current rhetoric, at least in the tech space, and I've seen this across other industries now, it's like, no, no, no. It's really just about making profit. It's growth at all costs. I think a lot of this has to do with hedge funds and with the vulture capitalists and this kind of posture of how. Companies are funded where it's like the goal is to extract as much as we can possibly extract from this organization. And then what happens is that then becomes the leadership, uh, posture that we can extract as much value out of the employee as we possibly can. And then that also translates into how we treat our customers. Can I extract as much attention, time and money? Out of my customers. And I think that's where we're seeing essentially the rot economy occurring where, you know, you see like Uber or, uh, we work, you know, multi million multi billion dollar valuations and these companies hardly make any money. Right. Well, why is that? It's like, well, they've been turned into machines just to extract shareholder value as opposed to fostering community or fostering growth within their employees or serving customers meaningfully.

Alyssa Nolte: 23:38

Yeah. I saw someone make a joke a couple of weeks ago on Tik TOK. That was basically like, okay, everybody, let's do it for the shareholders and like everyone cheering. And like, that's not really, that's not how people think, but if that's how business is functioning. So you've mentioned, you know, a lot of really incredible thought leaders in our conversation. Who do you know that you think is really taking the charge on taking you back

Nicholas Whitaker: 23:59

Yeah, well, honestly, you know, I think it's a group, not just an individual that I think about when I think about people that are taking back Monday. I think it's the people who are doing the hard inner work of self awareness and building skills around mental health and well being. It's the people who are speaking up and sharing their stories, uh, to help other people not feel as alone. Because I think If I learned anything over the last two years, I've talked to a couple hundred people, uh, who have experienced job loss or layoff or have been part of toxic teams or dealt with managers that weren't trained well, the vast majority of them, the vast majority of them tell me that they feel alone and they feel like that their experience is the only, only person that they've heard experienced something like this is themselves. So I think it's, it's the folks that are out there talking about it that are starting to raise awareness like yourself and saying, look, look, it doesn't have to be this way, right? There can be other ways of us working together that's generative and that's healthy and that helps everybody thrive.

Alyssa Nolte: 25:00

Awesome. And if someone is really connecting with you, they want to, they want to find you, where can they find you

Nicholas Whitaker: 25:04

Yeah, well, the first place I would point people to I'm very active on LinkedIn, so you just search for my name, Nicholas Whitaker on LinkedIn. You can check out what we're doing at the changing work collective at changing work dot org. And as I mentioned, we're going to be launching 2 new spaces soon for employees and leaders and eventually for students. If you're a coach or a consultant or a subject matter expert, there's also a space there for you. Uh, and then you can also check me out at Nicholas Whittaker dot com, where I have a few workbooks and a few, uh, guides that you can download for free. Uh, so if you're struggling with unhealthy environments and you're trying to figure out what comes next for you, I've got prompts daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly prompts to help you get your head around exactly what you need to be doing and how to move forward gracefully.

Alyssa Nolte: 25:49

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us on Taking Back

Nicholas Whitaker: 25:52

Thank you so much. It's so good to see you.