Toxic Tiredness, Culture Cracks & Stress Spillover — A Civility Matters Conversation with Dr. Mira Brancu

Nearly 7 in 10 workers say they've experienced a toxic workplace. On this episode of Civility Matters, Dr. Mira Brancu — clinical psychologist and co-author of Millennials' Guide to Workplace Politics — joins us to unpack Toxic Tiredness, Culture Cracks, and Stress Spillover: how workplace incivility drives burnout, and what leaders can do to build healthier, more civil cultures.

About Dr. Brancu: 

Dr. Mira Brancu is a former federal healthcare research executive, and current Founder of award-winning social impact consultancy Towerscope, as well as a Duke faculty member. She helps HR and business leaders expertise-driven high-pressure industries navigate through retention, burnout, uncertainty, and power dynamics in large, complex systems. 

She is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Founding Member of The Sage Group business advisory and Forefront, a leadership coaching legacy of MG 100Coaches Agency, a Duke University faculty member, author of the Millennials Guide to Workplace Politics and companion workbook, a Psychology Today columnist, and host of an award-winning top 5% podcast and YouTube channel, The Hard Skills.

Contact: 

Dr. Brancu's website: 

https://gotowerscope.com/

Podcast: 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hard-skills/id1706366751

YouTube: 

https://www.youtube.com/@DrMiraBrancu

For more on my work on rudeness and incivility, you can find information at:

www.activatesuccess.org

www.rudenessrehab.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmobrienphd/

https://www.youtube.com/@RudenessRehab

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Civility Matters, the podcast that seeks to answer the important question. Why you gotta be so rude? Hi there, I'm Dr. John O'Brien, the host of the podcast and author of the book Rudeness Rehab: Reclaiming Civility in the Workplace and Your Home Space. And I'm very excited for our topic today, which is Toxic Tiredness, Culture Cracks, and Stress Spillover. A conversation with Dr. Mirabronku. So we'll get to Dr. Bronku in just a moment, but first to acknowledge, you know, as I travel around the country now and speak to groups about this area of interest to me, incivility and rudeness, I often hear people say that they are concerned about this and the impact that it's having on our culture, and that they believe it's clearly on an increase. But then they ask John, is that really true? Could it really be that bad? And I could simply say yes, but I try to come up with some statistics to back up the fact that it is true. And this that's why in this podcast I always try to provide some startling statistics for the theme of that month. So here are this month's startling statistics. Two of them from iHire, an online platform. There are 2026 toxic workplace trends report found that seven in ten US workers, 70% have worked for an employer that they considered to be toxic, either presently or in the past. In addition, they said the data in this survey pointed to the idea that company leadership is the chief culprit in creating the toxic workplace. 80% of respondents said who had experienced toxicity blamed unethical, unaccountable, and unsupportive management. And almost three-quarters cited poor communication by leaders and managers. Finally, employees in toxic workplace climates are eight times more likely to burn out than those in healthy ones, probably no surprise. And separately, 44% of US employees report feeling emotionally drained, and 51% feel used up by the end of each workday, indicating that there's a high level of stress and some might say burnout in US workers being driven by toxicity in the workplace. That's the topic we're going to be unpacking today. And I could not be more thrilled to have our guest, Dr. Mira Broncu. And let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Bronku as I bring her out. She's a former federal healthcare research executive and current founder of the award-winning Social Impact Consultancy Tauroscope, as well as a Duke University faculty member. She helps HR and business leaders in expertise-driven high-pressure industries navigate through retention, burnout, uncertainty, and power dynamics in large complex systems. She's also a fellow of the American Psychological Association, which is a great honor, a founding member of the Sage Business Advisory, and forefront, a leadership coaching legacy of MG100 Coaches Agency. She's the author of the Millennials Guide to Workplace Politics, as well as the Companion Workbook, a Psychology Today columnist, and host of the award-winning top 5% podcast and YouTube channel, The Hard Skills. Please join me in giving a warm Civility Matters welcome to Dr. Mirabronku. And the crowd is going wild. We have a huge crowd in the audience here today.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Thank you so much. I love the clapping. Thank you. It feels so warm and welcoming.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Well, that's what we want to be. We want to be civil and welcoming from the podcast. So we're so excited to have you here. So before we're here. Yeah, before we get into the brass tacks of some of the content, I'd like to have guests share one fun fact about yourself. So please, please do. So what would you say is a fun fact about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Okay, this is actually because I I knew you were going to ask me this question, I really um went deep into um some fun fact that I haven't shared yet before in the past. And that is that when I was young, I had a Barbie doll. And that um Barbie doll was um at a time when I was also really inspired by Cindy Lopper. And so I took the Barbie doll and I shaved the side of her head and I cut her hair short and I colored it lots of colors. And somehow, years later, I have ended up looking like her. I don't know if it was like embedded subconsciously for years in my head, but this is how I've landed looking like.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Wow. It's quite that's quite interesting. A hairstyle that began many years ago. Many years.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Inspired by Cindy Lopper and a Barbie dance.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Inspired by Cindy Lopper, indeed. Indeed.

unknown 5:35

That's great.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Um okay, so we'll go from, I don't know how we segue from hairstyles to expertise, but here we go. Um, so um, why don't you tell the audience about your expertise in consultancy and coaching, um, and how you came to specialize?

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Yeah, so I actually was a school counselor first for five years. And um at that time, what I really learned um is how the environment and system work together and has a lot to do with your success. As a child and as you know, a school counselor and as a leader. Um up until that point, the the sort of training I had was you focus on the child, they come in, it's it's you and the child, right? But that's that's not the case, right? The child brings with them all of these people around them. Their parents have um an idea of how they want to succeed, the teachers have an idea of how they want to succeed, the administration, the district, you know, society, and um, all of that comes with them. And so I um sort of moved with that into my PhD program in clinical psychology. And my expertise began with suicide and PTSD assessment and intervention and neuropsychology, and how um within the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is where I started, and as Duke faculty, um, my main interest was how is it that you can have two people with similar backgrounds and someone over time develops PTSD symptoms or um experiences suicidality and someone else doesn't? What is the resiliency recovery model and what are the factors? And so again, it's this interaction of person by environment, right? And so um with all of that in mind, um, over time I ended up in various leadership roles within the Department of Veterans Affairs and within specifically research mental health operations. I was the deputy director of one center, interim director of another, and eventually supporting all 17 mental health centers with communication processes and productivity metrics and things like that. And um got really, really good at navigating a really complex hierarchical bureaucratic system, one of the largest within the US. Over time becoming very interested and re-specializing informally in organizational development. I didn't realize what that's what I was doing, but that is what I was doing. And um, the last five years that I was at the VA, I transitioned into being an organizational development psychologist, providing leadership coaching and team development um facilitation to leaders and teams across the system in hospitals and at central office. And all of that, when you pull it all together, it is um really about the human experience and interaction between the individual, team, organization, and society, this four-level perspective, and what leads to resilience and healthy outcomes in the workplace versus problematic interactions towards unhealthy outcomes. And importantly, bringing my expertise around diagnostic discernment, teasing apart what rests on the individual, what rests within the team, what rests within the organization, and teasing apart, like where is it on me to work on myself, and where does it rest with other people's control or power or influence?

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Yeah, that's um such an important point because I think we were talking before we went live here about the idea of how sometimes the individual may be reactive, and therefore their behavior becomes the focus of their negative behavior becomes the focus of attention when there are these issues at the other system's level, but people have to look beyond the individual to see that. So yeah, both.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

I mean, it it's always an interaction, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Exactly. Yes. So, what's one experience that most changed how you think about your work and people at work?

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah, yeah. Um, I might share uh two uh if if we have time. One is as when I was a school counselor, um at that time, um again, I was still very early in my career, did not have much political savvy, was not even interested, frankly. I just wanted to do my work, do my thing, right? And I ended up um making this political misstep where I ended up sending a very long email, never do that, very long email to my principal about things that I felt were happening that was unethical. And without having access to the decision-making process or how she got there or anything like that, and not in a very effective communication method, right? And um instead of being um provided with appropriate mentorship for how to develop good skills for effectively communicating concerns, um, I was kind of um shewed and dismissed and um treated as someone just politically clueless or clueless in general, um, and um really shut out of decision making altogether. And it felt really bad. And what, you know, what I learned was at first, what I learned was, oh, I guess I'm just not good at and shouldn't work in any large complex system, um, which is funny because later on I did. Um, but the second was um there's more beyond what's in front of me, and I need to be become aware of that. The second sort of experience was when I did start working with the VA and did have great mentorship and was, you know, did become privy to um sort of how to navigate a system, how to communicate effectively, how to use political savvy for good, um, good outcomes and good impact. I ended up being tapped to um serve as interim director ver very early on in my career, like three years in, of another research center that was labeled a toxic and hostile work environment. And they wanted me to somehow uh save the Titanic from sinking, um, in their words. And um, but I was picked because by that time I learned and was able to demonstrate um a certain level of unflappability, emotional intelligence, integrity, and um desire to do right and not be swayed by politics, but use politics for good, right? And so um all of these experiences really continued to shape how I thought about um navigating complexity, um using politics for good, um, recognizing there's more to what is happening in front of you, recognizing the stress response and how ugly it can look on the outside, and how you have to access it in a different way to help people be their best.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Wow, that's great. Well, that um that ties quite nicely to my next question. Thank you for that softball setup, um, which is about your um your most recent book that you co-authored, The Millennials Guide to Office Politics, and also the workbook follow-up. So that's a little infomercial for that for any of you out there. Yes. Um but maybe I mean, it seems like it builds on what you're just describing, but what prompted you to write the book, and then when it comes to office politics, um, both the challenges but also the opportunities you were just describing.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Yeah, yeah. So um what prompted me to write it is, you know, just I I felt like um I had a rare experience to be offered mentorship on something that many people do not get access to. Yes. And there's so many people that would benefit. And I thought, well, this is really special. And instead of keeping it all to myself, like it's my little secret, you know, um, it would be nice to make it accessible to as many people as possible, especially people who don't normally have access to higher level um leaders who could mentor them, right? So it was, you know, just making it accessible, basically, um, and digestible and practical and simple, right? Um, because a lot of people think this is like really um nebulous stuff. So that's what inspired me. Um in terms of like the sort of challenges, one challenge that people face is often that we are so exposed to dirty politics only, that when we hear the word workplace politics, office politics, we only think about the dirty stuff, the um, you know, backroom deals, the undermining, the sabotaging, the self-serving stuff. And we say, no, we're not interested in that because most of us want to function with integrity and aligned with our values, and it feels icky and it feels ugly. And so what we don't recognize in that challenge is that politics are neutral. They are a way to influence change and they could be used for good or for bad. And you cannot influence positive change at scale or at higher level impact without politics, because all work is done through human interaction and trusting relationships. And you can't do that on your own, right? If you opt out of politics, you're opting out of larger scale impact.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

And the challenge is always how do you move through politics with integrity? Um, the other challenge is as you gain power and privilege and influence, um, you can um inadvertently become more Machiavellian, more manipulative, more self-serving if you aren't constantly checking your values, especially if you have the right skills. Because the right skills to do politics are systems, um, perspective, or intelligence, knowing how to understand and navigate a system, emotional intelligence, and results-oriented, you want to see outcomes, results. Those three things you can use for good or for bad. And so um, if you have the right skills, if you're not careful about constantly focusing on how is this benefiting all, instead of how is this just benefiting me, um, or I have an idea that I think is right and therefore I should influence everyone else to do it my way, then there's a challenge in you ending up doing the very thing you didn't want to do earlier on your in your career, too.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Right, right. And I think also as people get higher up in an organization, they have fewer um external inputs of information, and the people that work for them are maybe less likely to give them honest feedback, and in that way it's very easy to slip into something like that.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

So that's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Okay. So um is there speaking of gain of influence at work, is there a version of gaining influence at work that's genuinely incompatible with civility, or can ambition and civility always coexist if someone's intentional about it?

SPEAKER_01 17:18

I think they can. I think they can coexist. I think you can do it well. Um going back to like first, like the the basics, like do you have the basic skills, systems level influence or intelligence, emotional intelligence and results oriented? Um, one way to think about this, and we, you know, we wrote this in our book too, um, is like a two by two. And um on one, you know, side of it, um the x-axis, let's say, is um self-serving or self-focused versus community focused.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

And on the y-axis, um access is um being um honest with it or dishonest with it.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

So you can be self-serving and dishonest and only focus on um, I want power, I want money, um, I want the corner office, I will cut knees to get there, I will sabotage, undermine, um, influence people to believe that this person is bad and I'm good, all of that stuff falls into the quadrant that is like self-serving and you know, uh dishonest, right? But if you continue to evaluate, like how much is this community-oriented and how much is this in an honest way? Like, I'm trying to get resources for everyone in order for us to all be able to have this higher level result, right? I'm trying to advocate for our team, I'm trying to um create a greater impact where multiple departments have to be involved and we all need to benefit in order to get this higher level result. Um, it's going to influence civility or incivility because the more people feel like you have their back and you're all in it together and you care about um everyone benefiting, right? Um, and you're able to use those influencing skills and the emotional intelligence, systems level, results-oriented stuff to get that done for everyone, not just for yourself, then um it has like a downstream effect on civility, right? It because it also has a downstream effect on burnout too, and on all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Yes, yes. And I think it's also not so much what leaders say, but what they do. And are they doing things that are simply or that appear self-serving only, or are they doing things that are service in service to others and they're communicating that? So that's such an important point, right? Okay, so let's talk about when things get bad. Okay. Um, so when a team is running on empty, what happens to civility? And now it's the chicken and egg question. Is exhaustion driving the incivility? Is the incivility driving the exhaustion? And does it matter when it comes to how a leader should respond?

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Yeah. Um, this is a really great question. I think it matters. I think it does matter for leaders to know. And um, in most cases, I think that exhaustion comes first before incivility. That's that's my opinion. I I'm curious to see what you think. Okay. Um, incivility can cause exhaustion too, you know. Um, it for sure. Um, we get all get exhausted and frustrated being in a a space where there's constant incivility as well. But I worry that something else typically will come before incivility. And that can be a wide variety of things. Like I see incivility um as a symptom, just like I see a headache as a symptom, right? Um, headaches could be because of migraines or a stroke or a concussion, right? And you treat them each in very different ways.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

And that's what really matters for leaders too. Like if the incivility came because of stress or burnout or organizational grief or organizational trauma, massive layoffs, re-orgs that are exhausting, all of those things can lead to bad behaviors because it's a stress response, right? Um it's you know, a response to um hidden grief that can't be demonstrated because nobody wants to talk about it because they want you to get back to work quickly, right? Like all of these things are really important to discern so that you know exactly what to target that makes sense as a target intervention.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Okay. And you just mentioned the term organizational grief. I think if you could just quickly define that for the listeners, I think that's a really important point.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Yeah, yeah. It's um it's not talked about. Very much. We don't like to talk about grief because it's such a soft feeling, you know, uh sounding thing. But um what I've noticed in the last year or two is a whole lot more of hidden or ambiguous grief in the workplace. And um usually in response to all of the upheaval and re-orgs and layoffs that are happening, and um what happens to people when this disruption and upheaval constantly happens, but it's not communicated well or it's not planned out well, and um people's roles change or their relationship to their organization changes. In ambiguous grief, what happens is like if you have somebody in your life who, for example, ends up having dementia or their personality changes because of a traumatic brain injury or something like that, you don't have resolved grief. You're still living with the person, you haven't lost them, but you have a new relationship that you somehow have to reconcile and you can't have closure.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

This is what's happening in organizations. You are having to somehow make sense of a relationship you previously had with your organization that is now lost or different and it's unresolved, and it doesn't look like grief. It looks like disengagement, it looks like quiet quitting, it looks like incivility, it looks like um cynicism, it looks like burnout, it can look like lots of things. Those are observable on the like if you think of the iceberg, those are observable behaviors, but the emotional experience is often grief or fear or anxiety, those kinds of things in response to what's at the bottom, which is the root cause, the layoffs, the reorgs, the mismanaged, you know, upheavals.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Well, and uh my dissertation was on grief, so I um have a little expertise in that, but but what you're describing is I think this experience of what's called disenfranchised grief, which is a lack of recognition that someone um actually could be grieving. Um, so like when someone's former spouse that they are divorced from dies. Like, well, people are like, well, you wouldn't be grieving that because you divorced them. Um, or a therapist whose client dies. Well, therapists don't have feelings.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Um unrecognized underappreciated grief. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Underappreciated, and that's what goes on, I think, in organizations, which are just I love it, love it. Um so uh when incivility spreads through an organization, uh, how much of it is that people choosing to be uncivil versus stress traveling through the system and coming out the wrong way? Kind of related to what we were talking about before.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Yeah, yeah. Um, I rarely, and maybe this is my rose-colored glasses, I rarely think people choose to be an uncivil. Um, 10% do, okay? There's always a 10%. But most people don't like themselves feeling this way. Like it will come out, and it's often a it can be a poor coping mechanism or depleted resources for better coping skills, right? Um, but most of the time, I um I think that most people don't choose. It is a common response to all kinds of um situations that happen that are completely out of your control to address.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Yeah, or it feels like it's out of your control.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Yes. And I think back to your previous point about, you know, is incivility causing stress or is stress causing instability? Certainly, I think, in my opinion, they can both kind of lead to the other. But I think I would agree with you. Look at that, we agree. Um, but that, you know, um few people get out of bed in the morning and think, hmm, how can I really get under the skin of my fellow humans today? Right? It's this a small percentage. Um, and I think a lot of times those are people that are hanging on to resentment about something, and that then their resentment, frustration builds up. You know, resentment is the poison I drink, thinking it will harm you. Sometimes people get stuck in the resentment, and then that starts to leak out um in problematic.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

That's right, that's right. And um you can also see it as um, you know, what happens when it gets harder and harder, and it requires more and more effort to emotionally regulate in response to something that is extremely frustrating and upsetting, and it keeps coming up and you haven't been able to resolve it. And then, like exactly what the the way that you described it, which is um, you know, I I don't know how else to respond to this. Like this is I can't let go of this. Uh it I'm holding on to it, I'm harboring it, and it just keeps coming up like like an you know, salt in the wound kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Yes, yes. Um so now it's time for our lightning round. We've got just a few minutes left. So, what would be some a quick final piece of advice you have for people if they are in one of these toxic workplaces?

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it depends on where you are in the organization, what you're right, going back to like the four levels. Um, you know, if you are um an individual contributor without any sort of leadership role, that's a lot more challenging. And a lot of that is like getting enough support um within and outside the system to be able to deal with what you're facing, and then learning how to communicate effectively, manage up, right? If you're in a leadership role and you're a mid-level manager, which is I think one of the hardest places to be in an organization right now because you've got things that you know, all ends like stretching you thin. Um, it's about both like learning the skills, listening to your people, listening to yourself, uh, coach, therapist, uh, mentors, supervisors, you know, family support, like surrounding yourself with your board of directors, who are they that can help you? Um, and then at the top of the organization, as you know, executives, um, learning how to create a really healthy organizational culture and pinpoint where the hot spots are in your organization where people are having trouble and knowing how to attend to those hot spots in very targeted ways.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Great. Okay. So how can viewers connect with you after this podcast?

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Yeah, there's a there's a couple of ways. First, uh on LinkedIn, we're doing a LinkedIn live today. And um, you know, definitely LinkedIn at Mirabronku. Um, my website is gotowerscope.com. Gotowerscope.com. And then you could also find me on my own podcast, The Hard Skills, as well as my psychology today blog, a new look at women's leadership, if you're specifically focused or interested in that.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Wonderful. Um, well, we did not get to everything that I was hoping we would talk about. So um, it's been so great to have you on here. I hope you would consider coming back. And I think that the large studio audience that we have here would also agree that they would love to have you back if you'd be willing to join us.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

I would love to come back. And then uh for those of you who are listening uh to this later, comment on LinkedIn so we could interact and learn more about what resonated for you.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Absolutely. That's great. That's great. So uh thank you, Dr. Bronku, for your time. And I want to thank all my viewers, whether you are watching live or whether you are um watching this afterwards. Um, we'd love to have you back to the next edition of the podcast. So, in closing, I'd invite you to recall the old question: how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but the light bulb must want to change. So, when it comes to the tidal wave of rudeness and incivility in our society, what kind of light bulb are you going to be? So, until next time, I'm John O'Brien. And remember, civility matters.