Ep 30: Self-Awareness in Leadership

CB_30 Renee Solo – Self-Awareness in Leadership: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

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Intro/Outro:
Plants thrive and grow in a peaceful, nourished environment, right? Well, it's the same with human beings. But what if that environment is not so peaceful? What if it's toxic? Welcome to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. In this podcast, you'll get practical, evidence-based strategies to help you cultivate and sustain a healthy and respectful work culture by tackling an age-old problem in healthcare: bullying and incivility. I am your host, Doctor Renee Thompson.

Renee Thompson:
Hi everyone! Welcome back to the Coffee Break podcast. Wherever you are, I hope you're in a good place, and I hope that you're having a great week. Okay, some of you, if you've ever heard me speak, may have heard this story, but I'm going to tell it again. Many years ago, I was sitting in our kitchen, and my husband said to me, you know, you slurp your coffee. I said, no, I don't. He said, yeah, you slurp your coffee. And I got a little defensive. I said, look, I've been drinking coffee since I was three years old, okay? I am a professional coffee drinker. Trust me, I don't slurp my coffee. I love this man. He just said okay, and he walked away. Several days later, we were in our shared office, and I had a cup of coffee like I always do and I started drinking it, and he was sitting next to me, mocking me. Slurp, slurp. And I said, oh my gosh, I slurp my coffee. I mean, big time, do I slurp? And then I did what most humans do. I defended myself, and I said, well, you see, I drink my coffee black, and it's hot. Yeah, yeah, and the slurping helps cool it down. Yeah, that's it. And he looked at me, and he said, you slurp your wine, too. Busted. Here's the deal. You cannot expect people to adapt their behavior if they're not even aware their behavior needs to be adapted. Today's episode is all about heightening awareness as a strategy to address disruptive behaviors and create a healthy, more professional, and respectful work culture. Now, we're going to talk about self-awareness. That's what this whole episode is about, what I'm going to share with you, though, because there's a lot to this. But today, what I'll share is something that I've been sharing during I Can Do It as a half-day workshop. I can do it. Actually, I love to do it as a full-day retreat with leaders. These are the eight essential skills of a healthy team. And those eight skills, number one, are self-awareness and all the consulting work that we do. Phase one is heightening awareness. So they're very similar. Okay, but I want to share this with you from a perspective of what can you do as a leader, to become more aware of how you show up every day, and then how do you heighten awareness with your team. Okay, so that's going to be the focus today. Everything starts with you as the leader, and the first thing that you need to do is turn the mirror back towards yourself and take a look at how you're showing up every day. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What are you working on as a leader? Trust me, if you don't know, your team knows exactly what maybe you should be working on. And what I want to do, and there are so many personality tests out there, there are so many different ways that you can get feedback from people. We're not going to talk about that. What I want to share with you is probably one of my favorite articles I've ever read from Harvard Business Review that speaks specifically to self-awareness with leaders, and it's an article titled Begin with Trust. And I'm going to actually put the link to that article in the show notes. But this article basically shares that every leader, so it doesn't matter if you're an executive, if you're a frontline manager, supervisor, every leader or CEO of a company like me, every leader has what they refer to as a trust wobble, and there are three of them. There's authenticity. Does your team believe that they're dealing with the real you? There's logic. Are you competent? Do they have confidence in your ability as a leader and empathy? Do you care? Do they think you care about them? Every single leader has a trust wobble, and one of the best first steps for you to become more self-aware is to identify what your wobble is, and then there are strategies to address it. So let me give you an example. I do a lot of coaching when we work with our consulting clients. I can usually tell in just one, maybe two interactions with a leader who I'm working with. I can tell you what their trust wobble is. Absolutely. So, I'll give you an example of authenticity. I was working with a leader, and there was a lot of disconnect between this leader and her team; they actually had some phrases that they would say about her behind her back. So they said, oh, she's the checkbox leader. So she has to go through and check it. I did my rounding. I made sure that I did my little check-ins with my staff because I'm supposed to, they said, but we know the real her. She is at work. She presented herself as very direct, almost stoic, very matter-of-fact, almost to the point of uncaring. But some people knew her from before and they said, oh my God, she's hysterical, she's fun, she's caring, and she likes to have a great time. But they weren't seeing that in her, so they didn't think they were dealing with the real her and actually lost trust in her because they were like, every time she's like, oh yes, you know, this is what we're going to do today. They're like, yeah, we know that you're just following a checkbox. So I worked with her on this, and actually, when I presented this to her, she was upset. She said that's not how I want to come across. And then I learned something about her, she said at a previous role, and that's where some people knew her from. She was her real self. She was friendly. She was caring. She'd come into the break room and she'd sit down with people they were eating, and she'd bring her lunch in and eat with her team, but people took advantage of that and used it against her, and she was really hurt by a few incidents. And I'm not going to mention it on this podcast today out of respect for her, but she was so devastated by how they took herself, okay, that she was being who she really is fun, friendly, would friend people on Facebook, and all of that, and they used it against her when it served them, and she vowed to never, ever put herself in that situation again. But what she did was she swung the pendulum too far the other way. So I said, it's not that you have to go and now, like everybody, or be friends with them on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram, but maybe she can just start being a little less rigid and allow for a little bit more of herself to come through, and she did it on her terms and what she was willing to do. I'm telling you, it made all the difference. So authenticity is, do they believe they're dealing with the real you? The next one I want to talk about is logic. I remember meeting this primary leader of a department. We were doing consulting work, and the first time I met with her, I knew what her trust wobble was. She told me nobody likes her. She walks into the break room. Everybody walks out instead of just coming directly to her. They contact corporate compliance, and they file an anonymous report. And as she was telling me all of this, she shared what she was trying to do to establish a better relationship with her team. What she ended up doing was she made promises she couldn't keep. She told them that there were things that she was going to do and wasn't able to keep up with, so they lost trust in her as being a competent and confident leader. Her trust wobble was logical because she tried too hard to be friends with them and to have them like her that she made again all these promises she couldn't keep. And I tell leaders this many times: your job as a leader is not to be liked by your team. I mean, it's nice if you are, and I like to be liked by people on my team. Your job is to be respected by them, and that's a different mindset. You show up differently with that. So, instead of making promises that you can't keep because you want your team to like you. You've got to get really clear on what you're capable of doing and what you're not capable of doing, and tell them that, be honest with them. She worked on that, and that was 4 or 5 years ago, and she's still doing a great job now. She has a high-performing, high-functioning, respectful, and professional team it wasn't just because she figured out her trust wobble and worked on it. There were a lot of other things that she did, but it really started with her getting clear on how she showed up every day as a leader and what she needed to work on. And then, finally, empathy; does your team believe that you care about them? And another leader I was working with. Okay, let's just be honest with each other if you have more than one child. There are days that you like one child better than the other child. All right? Just just saying, okay? If you have five kids, well, you know what I mean. There's always that one like, oh my God, why do you have to be so difficult? Why can't you be like your sister or your brother? And maybe you don't say that with your outside voice, but you think it with your inside voice. It's the same thing if you're a leader and you have two departments. There's always the one department that I guess maybe saying, you like better isn't the right way to say it, but because it's easier for you. Or maybe that's the department you had first, or that's your comfort zone because of the type of department it is; you tend to spend more time in that department than that second department. This leader I was working with that was true for him. He had two different departments. The second department was one that they added to his list, not uncommon, and what would happen is he would spend 80% or 85% of his time in the department that he liked and that he was comfortable with. That was his department. And then rounding and spending time in that second department was almost like an I have to do this, and he would go. And he would round, but what he did was always have his phone in his hand, even when he was rounding, even when he was talking to people, he wasn't fully present. His team recognized this. So I worked with him, and this is the advice that I gave him. And it's the advice that I'm giving you if you think your trust wobble is empathy, well, actually, it's good advice for anybody when you're rounding, when you're meeting with anybody on your team, put your phone away. Face them two feet facing the person you're talking to, especially if you're standing. You're in the hallway. Face your feet towards them. That's a body language signal that I am present with you. I am paying attention to you. Put your phone away and look at them, and that right there shows them that you care about them. If you bring somebody into your office, turn your computer screen away from you or minimize your email so that you don't see it. Because I know myself, if I'm in a meeting with my team and I have two monitors, and if my email is on my primary screen, but I'm having my Zoom call through my secondary monitor, it's easy for me to see a new email pop up. So now I actually minimize it so that the only thing I see is a picture of my granddaughter on my screen, and it prevents me from the temptation of looking away from the people I'm talking to. So, to recap on the trust wobble. Very first thing you need to do as a leader again is pay attention to how you show up every day because how you show up matters, and you need to identify those areas that you need to work on. A great way of doing this is by, like I said, I'll have it in the show notes. Read the article. Begin with trust. You'll learn more about the trust wobble. And there's a really great example in there, a non-health-care example that I think you'll find interesting, but it's to identify what your trust wobble is and then do things to work on it. I will tell you my trust wobble is logic. My team knows that I care about them. I am who I am, okay, good, bad and ugly. I'm that way everywhere. Everybody knows that you really do get what you know. I am who you see me out there in public on video. This is me. But logic, where it shows up, is that sometimes I'm not confident in myself, and I'll make quick decisions. I change my mind a lot, and that's been difficult for my team because I don't always give the thinking time that I need to actually make a good decision. So I make a quick decision and then change my mind three days later. That's my wobble, that's my issue, and that's what I'm working on. And my team will even tell you there are times I'll say, okay, I need to give that some thinking time. I need to create some white space so that I can think this through before I make a decision. So think about what your trust wobble might be, and then look at some of the strategies that you can start implementing to help you to work on that trust wobble. All right, let's shift gears a little bit. We talked about ourselves. Let's talk about how you raise awareness with your team. How do you help them to turn the mirror back towards themselves? One of our most powerful strategies to hardwire and sustain a healthy work culture. Is to add a healthy workforce as a standing agenda item in every meeting. If you're an executive, if you have an executive meeting, a healthy workforce should be a standing agenda item. If you're a frontline manager, a healthy workforce should be a standing agenda item at every staff meeting. No matter where you are in your leadership. If you're an executive, you're a director, whatever, any meetings that you go to in your organization, a healthy workforce should be a standing agenda item. And I always think, all right, I tell you to add this as a standing agenda item. What does that mean? Healthy workforce. Okay, and what are we going to talk about? This is what you do. Just like, let's say, gossip is rampant in your department, or maybe you're an executive, and you have high turnover because your new nurses are quitting within six months because they're being eaten alive by other experienced employees. Let's just say. Well, let's say the gossip. You don't just go to a staff meeting and say, hey guys, we're going to start working on gossip here because there's a lot of gossip, and it's in the patients' rooms. It's, you know, everywhere. And here are some strategies we're going to implement to work on our gossip. People will react in this way. They're going to say, oh yeah, gossip is a problem here. He gossips, she gossips, they gossip, everybody else gossips. But they won't turn the finger back towards themselves to say, yep, I gossip too. So you have to start by talking about, hey, I just read this article on gossip. Is gossip happening here? Where is it happening? How does it show up? Is this something that we want to work on? Just like my husband. Who? Told me I slurp my coffee. Just imagine if he would have come home one day with a pamphlet that said, here, honey, here's ten ways to stop slurping your coffee. But would I have said, why are you giving this to me? I don't slurp my coffee. He had to raise awareness first. I had to catch myself slurping before I was willing to say, oh yes, I need to work on this. So, your healthy workforce has a standing agenda item. Share an article. Share a video. Bring up a topic that is impacting your culture. Maybe it's, hey, let's talk about new grad turnover. Is this happening? How is it happening? Where is it happening? What can we do about it? So, you start first by talking about behavior. Hey, are we seeing exclusion here? A lot of people are talking about clicks in different departments. Do we think we have clicks here? Even though you might know darn well, you've got some clicks, but that's not helpful. Just to say this is a problem, we need to work on it. It's always better if you start by just heightening awareness of that problem first because it's almost part one of a part two process. You heighten the awareness first, so people actually start paying attention. Let them start observing, oh yeah, that's gossip. And then part two is okay, let's work on this, and then, you can implement the strategies. When the pandemic hit, we were in crisis mode 24/7. All professional development. All learning. All leadership development was gone. We weren't having meetings anymore. Staff meetings. We weren't having educational sessions anymore. There was no time for it. Now, fortunately, we're starting to move back towards having space for learning. It's one of the most important things that you can do in your organization right now is to create space for conversations about culture and for people to learn. We do a lot with skill development for healthcare teams. How to reduce gossip. There are strategies for that. How to give and receive feedback. Do you know their strategies for assertive communication? How can we create a culture here where we communicate with each other with honesty and respect? While there are a ton of resources out there, and I'll put some of ours in the show notes, we're not the only people who have this type of educational opportunities, but none of that is any good if you don't create space for it. Adding a healthy workforce as a standing agenda item can be a good start for you to start creating space. So maybe what you'll do is maybe 10 minutes or 15 minutes, add something about culture, some type of learning or skill development about culture in your meeting. So it's maybe not at another meeting, but can you take existing meetings that you have and augment them with little nuggets of content to help develop your team's communication skills and actually relationship building and how they work together? And then the last strategy that I'll give you to really create some self-awareness with your team is to conduct personality tests, and do surveys. I just learned from one of my clients there's it's called insights, it's colors. So there's either yellow, red, blue, or green. And when she was telling me about this, I knew right away I'm a yellow, I'm a yellow. But once you know what everybody's color is, it really helps you to know how best to communicate with with them. That's just one example. There's the DISC. There are so many other personality tests out there. It's fun if you can do something simple with your team. Now, if you're the primary leader in your department and you have a leadership team, say it's you. And then you have eight assistant nurse managers or five, then you could do something like the DISC I think would be really helpful. There's always the classic Myers-Briggs, and there are a lot of other ones, but they tend to get a little complicated. Pick something simple and do something simple with your team. There are a ton of them out there. And also we have a survey. It's called What If You're the Bully? Because it can't be everyone else. And yet we all have to ask ourselves, how do we contribute to bullying and incivility and our workplaces? I'll have a link to that survey in the show notes as well. But I want to explain to you how to use this. If you plan to use this, I give you permission to print as many copies as you want for your team. Take the survey again. Make copies and print them. Okay, this is a printing, not a putting it electronically; meet with your team. This could be part of your healthy workforce. Standing agenda item. Give everybody a copy. And tell them we really want to work on our culture here. We know bullying and incivility are on the rise, and we want to do something about it, but we first have to look at how each one of us contributes to this issue in our department. So here's a self-assessment. I'd like you all to go ahead and go through this 15-question quiz. It takes you like two minutes, not even. But here's the deal, don't ask for it back. It's purely a self-reflection. You're not going to collect and tally and then present your results somewhere. This is not that type of survey. It's a quick self-reflection. Now, two things. One, you may have some people who refuse to do it. It's okay. Let it go. It's actually very telling if somebody refuses to take the survey. But here's what I want you, as the leader, to say. This is probably the most important part. You give it to everyone, you explain to them just what I explained to you, and then you say, I completed this survey, and there are things I need to work on. They need to see that this isn't an I'm perfect as your leader, and you people are all the problems. They need to see that you're working on it too. Because if you look at the questions, you're going to answer at least one question with a not a perfect score. Me too. There are things that I need to work on, and I know what they are, and I'm working on them. Okay? So, be a little vulnerable. It's okay. All right, as we wrap up, I just want to reinforce something that I said earlier on. You cannot expect anyone. Any one person or any team and any leader to adapt their behavior if they're not aware of their behavior needs to be adapted. All culture change and all self-improvement have to start with awareness. Awareness needs to start with you as the leader and ask yourself, how do I show up every day, and what do I need to work on as a leader? But then it's also how I can help my team become more self-aware of how they show up. As I said, just create space for conversations about different behaviors about culture and then utilize specific strategies such as adding a healthy workforce as a standing agenda item, providing ongoing skill development for your teams, and anytime you can do a quick little survey or a little personality test. It's fun. People love to learn about themselves. This should all be not painful. Okay? Learning about yourself and being able to make fun of who you are. We have somebody on our team. Her name is Laura. She's awesome. A couple of years ago, we had a retreat, and we gave everybody an award, and her award was the 27 Question Award because. And it was a little star, and it had 27 questions, and that's the award that Laura got. Because we'll be in a team meeting and we're all talking and we're making decisions. And then Laura's quiet until, at the very end, she'll say, okay, wait a minute, I have 27 questions to ask you. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but we know this about her, and we make fun of it, like we laugh about it, it's hysterical. However, we also rely on Laura asking questions because now it's to the point where I'll say to her, this is what I want to do. Punch a hole in it. Tell me why I can't do it. Because if anybody can punch a hole in something and find where the issues are, it's Laura. So think about that with the people who you're working with. Help them to see how they are both from a, okay, good perspective and also from a not-so-good perspective, because everybody has that. A lot of times when I start speaking, if I'm doing a keynote or if I'm doing a workshop, I start by asking people, to tell me something good about the people whom they work with, and they give me all these great terms compassionate, smart, teamwork. They'll say they're funny; they're dedicated, they're loyal, and so on. And then I remind them, yes, you have people who you work with who are all those good things, but don't you agree those same people can show up very differently? They can gossip, they can criticize, they can be so nice to your face, but then they're mocking you behind your back. And that's because there's a psychological reality that exists in all human beings, and that is we all have goodness in us. We all have goodness, but we also all have badness. So this episode was about recognizing what is good. What is the goodness that you bring to the team? What about your team? What do they bring that's great. That's good for the team. But then recognizing what's not so great. Give yourself some grace, but then work on it. Okay, as I said, I'll put all of this in the show notes. What If You're The Bully survey, that Harvard Business Review article, my favorite. I'll also put a link to. I have some content on the Eight Essential Skills. Actually wrote a blog article about this a while ago. I'll include that. And then we do have some skill development opportunities I'll put that in the show notes there as well. So I want to thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Bullying and incivility are on the rise, and it really takes dedicated leaders like you to do something about it. And that's what this podcast is all about: equipping you with the knowledge, the skills, and the tools you need to address it. Thanks again for listening. Don't forget, if you really like this podcast to review, to rate, and to share it with others until our next coffee chat. Take care everyone. Bye.

Intro/Outro:
Thank you for listening to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. If you found these practical strategies helpful, we invite you to click the subscribe button and tune in every other week. For more information about our show and how we work with healthcare organizations to cultivate and sustain a healthy work culture free from bullying and incivility, visit HealthyWorkforceInstitute.com. Until our next cup of coffee, be kind, take care, and stay connected.

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