Employee engagement and healthy boundaries are vital components in creating a positive virtual work culture. In this podcast, guest Gina D’Andrea, conflict moderator and facilitator, chats with Stephanie Menefee, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in the School of Professional Studies at National University about ways to build a positive culture. Gina helps leaders build happier workplaces, on-site or distributed, through training, consulting, and mediation services at any organizational level.
Employee engagement and healthy boundaries are vital components in creating a positive virtual work culture. In this podcast, guest Gina D’Andrea, conflict moderator and facilitator, chats with Stephanie Menefee, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in the School of Professional Studies at National University about ways to build a positive culture. Gina helps leaders build happier workplaces, on-site or distributed, through training, consulting, and mediation services at any organizational level.
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
0:01
Welcome to the Center for the Advancement of virtual organizations podcast, promoting a positive culture in the virtual workplace. I'm Stephanie Manaphy. And today we're joined by Gina and D'Andrea whether up a mediator and facilitator who believes we spend too much time working not to be happy at work, Gina, welcome. And thank you so much for taking the time to come and chat with us about positive culture in the virtual workplace.
Gina D’Andrea
Thank you, Stephanie. I'm so happy to chat with you today. Yeah, so I first before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. I am a middle career professional. I worked in the federal government for a couple of years worked with nonprofits, I've worked with for profits. And I've worked in some toxic work environments and some non toxic work environments. And a few years ago, I had the opportunity to kind of really take a step back from being in the thick of working really hard every single day and think what do I want to be doing with my career at this point, and that's why I decided to continue to facilitate groups to help them do their best work in positive ways, but also become trained as a mediator, and begin to better understand and specialize in helping other people resolve conflict. And there's all kinds of mediation but I specialize specifically in interpersonal conflicts at work, both virtually and in person.
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
Oh, I love it. You and I have this in common and very excited about our chat today. And everyone if you haven't been to Gina's website, Chantilly mediation and facilitation.com, she has a fantastic blog, I encourage anyone to go and check it out. You just a wealth of resources and very easy and fun to read.
Okay, so let's hop right into these questions. Um, you know, lately we've been seeing a lot about this whole quiet quitting movement. And, you know, I have to say I'm I am conflicted about whether it's really people just starting to set healthy boundaries at work. Yes. So I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about the difference between disengagement and healthy boundaries at work?
Gina D’Andrea
Oh, absolutely. And I feel the same way as you about the phrase quiet quitting. It sounds beautifully, right? Like the former wannabe English major, and he loves the firm, how it sounds quiet quitting, it's so intriguing. But there's a lot about it, when you start to read up on examples of quiet quitting, that really sounds like people are just setting some healthier boundaries, which is incredibly important as we learn new ways to work and work in different ways after the pandemic, when sort of at least those of us who work in offices, kind of just went home and started working nearly constantly because there wasn't a lot of else to do. And it was easy to work and login and get stuff done.
Gina D’Andrea
3:06
And we lost some boundaries that maybe some of us had in the past. But you know, I think about being in an office nine to five in the early 2000s. And I don't know that we all had great boundaries than either. So, you know, when you think about engagement and quiet quitting, I think it's absolutely possible to have someone who is, quote, unquote, quiet liquid. And you know, they're not necessarily going the extra mile, they're not putting in extra hours or volunteering for things that might be related to their job, but not really part of their zone of responsibility, and yet still be very engaged in the work that they do, because they're motivated to get it done. They care about it, they want their projects to succeed. So you can have someone setting healthy boundaries, who may even become more engaged than they used to be because they're avoiding burnout. A disengaged employee is someone who just seems to be completely checked out, they're doing mediocre work, and when they're talked to about their quality of their work, they just don't seem to be very motivated to improve it.
They might even be actively sabotaging work, or a lot of absenteeism, presenteeism, the disengaged folks, you sometimes I think the best thing managers can do if someone's really disengaged is kind of help them out the door, you know, help them find a new role, that's a better fit for them. But in any case, the first thing to do when you're trying to kind of understand how employees feel about work, if they might be engaged or not engaged, is to just talk to them about how they feel about their job and what motivates them.
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
4:54
Oh, that's that's a really, really beautiful distinction.
Gina D’Andrea
5:00
So for an employee who is kind of wondering how they can help their employer understand the difference, you know, maybe this employee has consistently gone above and beyond and, you know, works 80 hours a week, but really, maybe should only be working 50 hours a week, and, you know, kind of decides to start setting those healthy boundaries healthy, how can they help their employer understand that they are still engaged, they just need a better work life, you know, integration situation, yeah. Or that beautiful phrase from the Surgeon General's new report on mental health in the workplace, they talk about work life harmony, which I love. It's not really balanced, because that's like the idea of a tight rope. And if you fall, something's out of whack, there's a total disaster, and integration, I fall into the camp of people who I don't want necessarily all of my work, integrate until the rest of my life, I'd like to go do other things that have nothing to do with work, right. So I love the concept of balance, or in harmony, rather.
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
I think if you're the employee, and you really need to, you know, as you suggested is definitely kind of cut back on hours. The best way to do it is to get really clear individually, like self reflection, journaling, chatting with trusted colleagues, about why you're doing this and how you want to do it. And then talk to your manager individually, one on one, hopefully, you have one on one sessions with them individual check ins that you get to be in charge of and set the agenda on a regular basis. But even if you don't, you know, let them know, you'd like to talk to them about kind of the structure of your work and say, Look, I've been doing 80 hour weeks, and it's just not sustainable for me, you know, I find myself it's impacting me in these ways. And I'm at a point right now where I'm trying to have better work life harmony. And this is exactly how I'd like to begin working. But I want you to understand why I'm making these changes, and how much I do still care about doing a good job here. Yeah. And, you know, I think we think a lot about employees and employees being the ones setting the boundaries, but how about employers? Do you think that?
Do you think that employers or leaders have a responsibility to help their employees achieve that kind of harmony?
Gina D’Andrea
7:35
You know, or maybe how a leader can recognize someone who's becoming disengaged, maybe because they're putting too much into the workplace and kind of help bring them back? Yeah, I like that question. I, I'm gonna start with the first thing you asked about responsibility, because I actually think leaders do have a responsibility to try to help their employees achieve a kind of work life harmony, and you can't dictate what that should look like, right? There are people who are perfectly happy, for whatever constellation of reasons to be doing something work related or working really hard on a project at 10pm on a Tuesday or 3am, on a Thursday or a Saturday. And if that's what works for them, cool, let them do that.
But hey, maybe they're not going to be available on a Monday at noon, you know, and so getting to know people's preferences and when they are most productive is really important. Now, the leaders in a lot of organizations aren't going to know that about everyone that's just too granular. But leaders have to set they have to model the example right? So, for example, I've had one client who, you know, they're supposed to have no meetings on Friday afternoons, and they're supposed to have everyone in the company, take a midweek break and walk away from their work for an hour or two. In the end, the idea behind these policies is, let's help people achieve work life harmony, which I want 100% agree with, I think it's a wonderful policy to have in place, but no one follows it. When you talk to people. It's a very rare employee who actually follows these things.
And unfortunately, it's the leaders who are having meetings on Friday afternoon or answering and sending emails during the midweek break. So it's important for leaders if they're going to take that responsibility seriously and set policies around it to follow those policies. Even if they're not setting strict policies, they need to model stepping away, right. Being unavailable on a vacation is a good thing, for example. So boundaries like that are really important.
And in terms of helping managers recognize the folks who are disengaged. I almost
think it's more important to train them on recognizing who's unengaged. And how to have the conversations about motivation.
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
10:10
Because that it can be difficult. It's I think, for a lot of managers that can feel like, oh my gosh, am I getting too personal? Let's just keep it about the tasks. I know there are questions, I shouldn't ask my employees, what if something accidentally comes out of my mouth? That's wrong. And so a little bit of training can go a long way in helping people to feel more comfortable in broaching discussions about what do you love most about your job? Why are you here?
Gina D’Andrea 0:39
Not just to new employees, but to people who've worked with you for five or six or 10 years, right? Like, what do you love about coming into work every day? And what don't you love? Even if we can't do anything about that part of your job? Like, it's important to be aware of it? So it's, I think it's about having those conversations. And the modeling behavior comes in there too, because the leaders have to have the conversations with their direct reports, have the conversations with their direct reports all the way sort of down the line to the newest, most unexperienced employee?
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
11:12
Yeah, I love that. And, you know, I mentioned the Surgeon General's report. And, you know,
Gina D’Andrea 11:23
I mean, we know, we know, we spend a lot of time at work, and we know that so many people are working. But for me, it kind of hit home that the average worker spends, like, half their waking life at work. Yeah. And it really, you know, our, our work environments do is like, played a significant role in shaping our well being. And I, I am going to mess up this quote, but I, I remember from the report, the Surgeon General, something about thriving organizations and healthy communities. And that's like, a healthy workforce is the foundation for all of that, if I remember correctly.
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
12:10
And so I am wondering if, you know, if somebody's working in an environment that makes them feel like they want to disengage? Is there anything they can do to move the needle in a positive direction? Like, who do they who do they talk to I know that you mentioned, you know, kind of saying, it, here are my boundaries, I'm still I'm, I still love working here. And, and then from the employers perspective, kind of helping frame, the well being at work, but if somebody just really kind of feels lost, but they like their job, and they want to stay, because they've been there five to 10 years, you know, how can someone get involved in promoting a positive culture from the ground up? Or is that even possible?
Gina D’Andrea
12:55
I think it's possible, I don't think it's easy.
I think to promote a positive culture from the ground up, it's best to sort of be able to have almost like your own interpersonal and emotional intelligence skills have to be really, really good. And even in the best circumstances, it might not work out if you're really surrounded by a lot of maybe competitiveness or surrounded by a lot of disengagement. But you know, what I'm thinking about, and the reason I say emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills is, it's about sort of even just like a different kind of boundary, like, like an in the moment boundary, like the ability to walk into an office or login at your computer, and say to yourself, Okay, I may have been stressed out yesterday, Today's a new day, I'm going to greet people kindly. And we're gonna have a little bit of personal chatting time. And then we're gonna dive into the work after that, right. So it's setting that kind of a tone is really the responsibility of everyone, right? So whether it's starting with the sort of ground level, or starting at the highest levels, it doesn't matter so much where it starts as long as people are doing it. And I think that connects directly to something I loved in the Surgeon General's report, which was this idea that organizations are communities, people seek a feeling of connection and community in their workplace, right. And so in order to feel that you have to be reaching out to try to personally connect with and get to know your coworkers. And that can happen within a department across a department. It can happen via slack and other messaging systems or it can happen in person.
I really think that any of the positive or negative things that we experience at work happened in virtual organizations and hybrid organizations as much as in personal organizations. But the more that we experience, someone's just being kind to us individually, the more it sets the tone that that's what's expected. And that's what I need to model. And so maybe if I'm stressed out, and I can't do that I'm actually going to take a break and walk away.
Dr. Stephanie Menefee 15:20
Yeah, that's a really great insight.
And I think, maybe kind of, I'd like to switch gears and talk about those seeking new employment because of what you mentioned how it is so difficult, or can be difficult to change a culture once you're in it. You know, unfortunately, I know, we've been seeing a lot of layoffs lately. And so I think a lot of people are seeking employment. So I'm wondering if you can give us a little bit of insight on how potential candidates might be able to learn about an organization's culture and their community during the interview stage to decide whether or not they really want to join that community?
Gina D’Andrea
16:05
And it's a wonderful question. And I sort of feel like I wish I had that magical answer early in my career. I, it's really, I don't know that there are any specific questions that are sort of the magic bullet things to ask right in an interview. It's kind of just more observing the behavior. Right. And that can be as straightforward as you know, I'm supposed to meet with the hiring manager, and they've rescheduled me Oh, and then they rescheduled me again, gosh, another rescheduling me a third time what's going on here, right.
I really appreciate organizations where there are enough sort of layers and enough employees where there's an HR person that I can connect with individually to try to understand more about what might be going on for that hiring manager, even if I can't talk to them directly.
I think we do live in a very online world, and reading reviews of what a places culture is like is important. But it's also important to understand that it's usually the people who have the worst experiences who will do something like write a Glassdoor review, for example. So even with that, I think it's just one source of information. And maybe we should just all follow our guts more during job interviews, right. And that can be really hard to do if you, you know, don't know where your next paycheck is coming from, or how you're going to pay the light bill this month, right. But if you're really if you're in a position where you can be a little bit picky, and you're looking for a place where you can really thrive and fully be yourself, it's probably most important to just follow your gut and see how it feels for you to be going through this process. How the interviews feel how the conversations feel, however, they're happening, Zoom telephone, email exchanges, how does it really feel to be doing this with these folks? Because it's probably not going to change that much. The more you're there. Yeah, you're right. I think that's great advice. When it comes down to you know, the part where your prospective employer says, Do you have any questions for us?
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
18:24
What is the appropriateness level? Do you think of asking questions about, you know, evening and weekend required hours? And I think it is appropriate to ask those questions.
Gina D’Andrea
18:43
Again, it's sort of like, you know, unfortunately, if it's risky to ask that that might be a sign of a toxic work environment, right. If they're concerned that right off the bat, you're saying, Well, you know, I'm not going to be available on on most weekends, or, well, I want a position that doesn't involve too much travel. So I'm glad to hear that this isn't, you know, too much travel. Because, you know, I've got kids or I've got a loved one I care for who's homebound, whatever it may be, you know, what, if they're going to take exception to the fact that you're asking that question, it might be a better off for you not to be working there, because it's not going to meet the needs that you have for your life. And that's difficult.
I think the other way that you can go when you're asked that question, is to get into more details of how does this specific person work with their supervisor? Right. So assuming this is a conversation with a hiring manager and not an HR person, you want to ask about oh, do you regularly do one on one check ins with your employees? Does the employee get to set that agenda? You know, if I working for you, if you hire me and I you know, have last minute things that come up? What's the way that you want your staff to handle that.
Since the words they said, but also observe what their responses are, right? So if you're talking about, you know, can I work from home and the, you know, on a, let's say it's a sort of a hybrid environment, and you're wondering about how much flexibility you have on what days you have to come into an office, or even if it's all virtual, and you're wondering how much flexibility there is on exactly what hours you're expected to be responding to email and accessible at your computer? And the answer is something along the lines of, well, if there's an emergency, of course, you can stop working or work from home. That's not a very supportive response. Because that's not allowing for you to make decisions about how to live your life that's talking about emergencies, which is not what you just asked a question about. So observing the way people respond is really important.
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
20:45
Yes, that is fantastic advice. And I love I love the flipping the question on its head and asking the open question and kind of letting letting the prospective employer tell you how they run the organization and just kind of let you take it all in and decide if it's going to be a good fit, based on their answer you leave.
Gina D’Andrea
That's exactly what job interviewing is. It's taking it all in exactly as you phrase it and deciding if it's going to be a good fit. And unfortunately, we live in a world where too often people are making these decisions out of desperation.
So sometimes it's a question of, can this be the right job for right now? Right? Is this something that works for the next six months or a year? And then if I need to move on, will I be able to do that? Yep, absolutely.
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
Oh, I'm so enjoying our conversation. I feel like I could just keep asking you questions. But I, you know, is there anything else that you'd like to share with us today? Any insight for anyone who wants to help promote positive culture, their workplace?
Gina D’Andrea
Oh, yes, actually, I really encourage everyone to read the Surgeon General's report. And they have this beautiful visual that you can easily see if you just sort of Google US Surgeon General mental wellbeing work.
And what I love about the visual and it comes through, if you read the whole report, it's not that long, I don't remember maybe 40 something pages. But the visual specifically says in the center, that everything in the report is centered on worker voice and equity.
And if you're in a position where you get to impact the culture that you work in, and everyone impacts the culture a little bit, right, we're all sort of always co creating culture to some extent, focusing on the voices of others, maybe it's listening to your own voice, listening to the voices of the people that you work with. And also, if you're in a manager or leadership position, listening to the voices of people who report to you listening to what are the experiences of the people that I'm leading?
And do I understand what they are in an equitable way, like no matter who the these folks are, whatever experiences they're bringing whatever, Rees disabilities, genders, national origins, everything? Do I really understand all of that? And most of the time the answer is going to be, maybe that's okay. But what can you do to understand more, that's really how you build a more positive work environment, you work towards something where people who might not have a voice in a hierarchy are still listened to. The other thing that is so important for people to recognize is that conflicts can happen even in the most positive work environments.
All conflicts are, is there's more than one idea about what should be happening. And when you think about it, that's really what innovation is. So a positive work environment doesn't necessarily mean all everyone's just happy all the time. It doesn't mean there's never any conflict or disagreement, conflicts and disagreements happen and that's okay. It's about how people deal with that, that may or may not be indicative of a positive work environment.
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
I am so glad you said that. Because you're right. Conflict is just a generally uncomfortable area. But if you do have that positive culture, how you can work through it can can mean all the world for productivity for the organization and innovation.
Yes, I could not agree and more actually, if you go to H H s.gov. You can download the Surgeon General's framework and it's the workplace and mental health, I'm sorry, workplace mental health and well being and it was just released in October of 2022. So it is hot off the presses and Gina's write them. The framework is beautiful. It's very well laid out and very well described. And so I will echo the endorsement to go and download and read that report.
I will also plug your website one more time because I have to tell you, your blog is incredible. We were supposed to do this podcast what a full month ago. Yeah. Just slightly before that. I went to your website to learn more about you and I have been reading your blog since then. Yay. And I love it. And so I would tell anyone to go and read it. Really great insight and advice. You know, if you're a practitioner, there's something you can learn. Take it for me. And if you're not then there is just a wealth of information. So, Chantilly mediation and facilitation.com.
Dr. Stephanie Menefee
26:09
Yes, Gina, thank you so much for joining us today in support of the Center for the Advancement of virtual organizations. We do truly appreciate your insight and we know our listeners will benefit from your experience.
Gina D’Andrea
Thank you so much. This was really lovely Stephanie.