EP 45: Creating Positive Workplaces

Coffee Break-Simone Nicholson: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Coffee Break-Simone Nicholson: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
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, Dr. Renee Thompson.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Hi, everyone! Welcome back to another episode of the Coffee Break podcast. My name is Dr. Renee Thompson, and as you know, this podcast is all about providing leaders with the practical skills and tools that they need to cultivate a healthy work culture by addressing disruptive behaviors. Today, we have a really special guest on our show: Dr. Simone Nicholson, who is the OR manager at Lankenau Medical Center in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. Welcome to the show, Simone.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Oh, thank you, Renee, for having me. I really appreciate you offering me this honor.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Well, I have to tell all of you, listeners and watchers, I first met Simone when we were both invited to be on a panel for AORN to discuss disruptive behaviors. I remember meeting Simone, and she was just part of the prep. She was talking about how she has managed to actually shift the culture in her OR from negative when she first started to this incredible, positive, respectful, and professional work culture. And right away, I said to myself, oh, she needs to be a guest on my show. She needs to be telling other people what she has done because she has seen remarkable improvements and really excited that she said yes. When I asked her to tell you a little bit more about Simone, she is a very well-rounded nurse manager with over 16 years in perioperative nursing and trauma. Simone believes that actually being a willing leader who is a co-creator of change, and I love that co-creator by understanding the struggles that people are facing while remaining joyous, being joyful, and spreading these feelings to others. And one of her main goals is to create trust and a positive culture within her team. And I recently learned that Simone just became Dr. Simone Nicholson. She just got her doctoral degree, so yay! Welcome Simone.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Thank you, Renee. Thank you for that introduction. And once again, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure to meet you on that panel. It was supposed to be. It's meant to be.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yeah. It was a great conversation that we had because, as many of you know, I'm out there working with leaders and their teams across the country to help them address bad behavior. But then you have somebody like Simone who was actually in the hospital doing this, and there was a great partnership, a great synergy. One of the things that I wanted to chat with you about is you are so dedicated to developing your teams, okay? Like there's nothing more important to you than your teams. And you've done such a great job addressing disruptive behaviors despite the nursing shortage. Okay. And at the same time, you're creating this positive environment. And I've heard you say the word joy several times now. So can you tell us your story of how you started in this department? And you know, the type of department that it was, and then how you started to shift to be a more positive work culture.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Absolutely. When I first started my nursing career and perioperative services, I was a brand new nurse. So, I was the nurse resident per se. Okay, I remember my first day being so afraid, getting to work extra early, you know, being in the locker room wondering who was going to say hi or hello. And I've always been a positive person with a huge smile. So as I, you know, started my career at a level one trauma center, it was a challenging environment and I went through phases of change with people per se. The person who trained me eventually was hired, and I grew up in an environment where nurses ate their young, they were strong-willed and you had to listen, and that was it. Which was fine because that's all I knew. And one day, I was asked and offered to be a clinical nurse manager. And I thought to myself, hmm, I don't know. I'm fine where I'm at; I take my call. Everything works out. But someone said, if not you, then who? And I looked around at my colleagues, and I thought to myself, they're right. If not me, then who? And it was difficult being up here to a boss or a leader. And I was thinking, and I was younger than a lot of the people who were there. And I felt, how can I do this? And I just did. I had honest conversations. I, you know, asked people, what can I do to help you. What can we do to change the unit? And I was on that unit where 15 years prior to starting here at Lankenau. When I was there during my tenure as a clinical nurse manager, then within a year of becoming a nurse manager, people used to say to me all the time, Simone, I'm only here because of you, and I thought about that. Huh? What am I doing differently? What am I doing differently than any other place? Nursing? There are options. And with the pandemic happening and everybody traveling, you know, there were many options. But people would leave, but not leave. They would stay on per diem. You know, they just wanted to gain more money or monopolize the opportunity that was out there. But I thought, what am I doing differently? And I asked the question to multiple people, and they said, you listen. You take time to talk to us. And not just about work, just about life developing the whole person because that's what nursing is about, the whole person. So when I was leaving that organization, which I wasn't looking for a job because I loved where I work, but I was given an opportunity, and I wanted to develop my career, and I had to know that I could put my skill set somewhere else. I could manage or develop different people, not the people that I grew up with per se, because they knew me, and I walked into this unit. I don't like to use the word broken, but I felt it was broken because of broken promises and people left. So, teams were broken, and we were very short. Once again, I'm very positive that Joy is working for my big smile, my laughter, my humor. And people were looking at me like, the problem with this girl?

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yeah. Why is she smiling?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Exactly. And it is funny, six months after me being here, and I guess my team got comfortable. Someone said, you know, when you first started, we thought that was phony. You were fake. That was a fake. But we realize that's just you.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
So, I actually want to unpack that a little bit because there were a couple of things that you said that I thought were really powerful. First of all, you were in that department for 15 years, so you knew everyone. They knew who you were as a human being. You just happened to then step into a leadership role. And even though that brings challenges, okay, like I was your peer yesterday, now I'm your boss. They still knew who you were. Then, you have an opportunity to step into a different environment. I tell you, that takes a lot of courage because you had established yourself as a leader, and you know that organization, and now you're stepping into the unknown, and you're smiling and being positive and bringing that. That's your personality, so incredibly important. But people resist at first, they don't know that they can trust this. I was just talking to somebody earlier this morning about this toxic positivity where people are faking, you know, being positive. You know, the whole building's on fire, but they're like, everything is just fine. Don't worry, everyone. I'm like, okay, can we just be real here? The building is on fire, and let's do something. But this is who you are as a human being, and having the patience for this new team to realize this about you. I bet it was hard. Tell us about that period of time when you're coming into work every day, being Simone. You're who you are, and yet you're faced with like, what the heck did she have to smile about? I actually had somebody tell me that she's very positive, too. One of her coworkers, this was a bedside nurse coworker, said, why are you so happy all the time when I see you so happy makes me want to punch you in the face. I am not kidding. She said that like, okay, there's something not right with somebody who would say that. Why are you so happy all the time? So, how did you deal with that?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
So that's funny. I do get that a lot, right? I do get that. Why are you happy all the time? Listen, me personally, there are so many other things going wrong in life, but I have to always look for the positive. I think about the glass is half full versus empty. Another thing you said. You said something about the place being on fire, but you're still happy. For me, I like to use analogies. That's just the way I get people to be empathetic because some people aren't right. So I always say, like your child, if a baby falls, then we freak out like, oh my God, I don't want to cry. But if a baby falls, you're like, you know what? It's okay, it's okay, you're okay. People don't freak out. So when things happened, or things were going wrong, and people were leaving, I had to remain calm because my team watched me, and my response is going to initiate their response. So, I always keep that in the back of my mind. I have to remember I'm being watched, and it's still once again, I was vulnerable. I let them know I'm healing, and I get upset, but I just don't do it in front of the public. I come to my office behind my computer. I have honest conversations. It's just a way in which you deliver it. So yes, the building was burning on fire. But I said, and I use a lot of like, slogans or motivational speeches or motivational. I start my meetings with what I call a caring quote or a caring story. And I always say: sometimes you have to start over to build something great.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Wow. I appreciate the fact that you just didn't go in there with one positive, and I'm going to stay this way, and you people are just going to have to, you know, get used to me. And there is an element of that, but at the same time, you started taking action. So, starting your meetings with the caring story, you're very motivational sharing some of those even quotes. You know, we're big on sharing memes, and people are like, what are we in kindergarten? You got to post these things on the wall and people want the positive. Even though some people will complain about it, they're looking for anything that can give them hope. And you're so right. They will watch the leader to see how the leader reacts, especially if there's something negative that happens. And that's why, you know, you got to put your game face on. But at the same time, it's okay to say, Holy cow, I've not experienced this before. But you know what? I'm confident we can figure this out, you know, so there's a balance between fake it until you make it or, you know, put your game face on because your team is watching you, but at the same time, be okay by saying this is going to be a big challenge for us. I am confident we have the right people, though, who can, you know, we can do this together kind of thing.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
So what I did was I like to talk about the problem. So what's the problem? We have this problem, and then give me possible solutions, and we can try every single solution until we land on something. So it's not that I move over the problem, or I walk over it, or I ignore it. We definitely have to talk about it or deal with the matter, but how are we going to fix it? What can we do? Maybe we don't have any ideas. And I'm one to say I'm not the smartest person in Rome, or maybe I am, but if we all put our heads together, we can figure out anything. We've had people come, and we've had people go, but leading by example and having those transparent conversations, I didn't walk in here saying, oh, well, I do it this way, and this is the way we're going to do it. I talked to the people here. What are the issues? What do we need to work on? I had to listen. I had to learn. I let every member of this team know. You've been here longer than me. You have to tell me what I can do to make this place better. Tell me, what do you feel that's wrong? That's where we need to start. How can we fix it if we don't know what's wrong? It was funny. I walked into the institution and our evals are due by June 30th, and I don't think I've been here five months. I know some people, you know, like I said, some people didn't want to talk to me and have those conversations, but there was a great opportunity for me to meet every last one of my employees to get to know them. I created this vein around Nurses Week. I said, listen, if you get a raffle to win something, the only way you get this raffle ticket is if you share something with me and I share something with you. And it could be anything. It could be something about work. It could be something about your life. It could be about your children. And that's how I got to know people. Just a fun fact. That's what it was. It was called Fun Fact. Give me a fun fact about you, and I'm gonna give you a fun fact about me. It's sharing. It's not just, oh, you tell me all about you, and you get nothing from me.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Okay, I have to ask for details now because I am all about practical activities, things that they can do. Okay, so you had a fun fact raffle in order for them to get a raffle ticket, they had to share a fun fact about themselves with you, and then you shared a fun fact with them, right? Okay, then, what were the prizes like? How did you reward people? And, you know, obviously, you pull out a raffle ticket and whoever is ticketed is they win. But what were some of the prizes? What did that look like?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
So, Renee, let me just tell you this. I love playing games. Like I love making work fun. Okay, so I feel like I am the master at it. Okay, we can talk about this for hours because I've done multiple things here, and just my staff loves it, and we're competitive. So let me just start my last job. I literally will break the bank to make sure everybody has some defenders. Or I always had at least every bit of 80 to 100 direct reports. So yes, I would start early in the game. I would start in January when Christmas will go on and they're over. That's when I start for Nurses Week. When we're going back to school, that's in September. I start for Christmas, and I thought to myself, I don't know these people. I can't go here and do this, you know, like who is it?. So I said, you know what? I'm gonna do something a little different. If I have good prizes. One was a $50 gift card to Tiffany. Listen, they didn't know what the prize was. I never tell people what the prizes are. You can't. You have to just want to win. That's all it's about. You just gotta want to win. It could be a dollar, but the prizes were great. I got $25 gift cards, and I also did a Hannah Stone spa for it, and I ran it. Okay, I wasn't going to play.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Can I play because I want a massage? Just my favorite thing in the world. That's always like my gift to me, or my husband, my family. Oh, that. These are some awesome prizes.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
But that will save them more money by doing those for prizes than I used to spend before. And you know what? Sometimes, it's not about the dollar amount or the gift in itself. It's just about the fact that someone did it, because no one ever did that for this fact before, which is surprising.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Wow. So, what if you had an employee or tell me if this happened who didn't want to participate?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
There are a thousand people that don't want to participate, so I did have that happen here. The staff when I had staff meetings because we didn't have staff meetings prior to me getting here. So, my director and I worked to get protected education time. So we have two days a month actually, one is education and one is our staff meeting. Everybody was sitting in the back of the auditorium, so I thought, okay, I used to say, I'm not going to buy it. Everybody move forward. Come talk. Let's have fun. So they thought, okay, so I said, let's have a chat and chew. So we had to come to the front to sign in. If you get your food then we're going to check with you.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
I love it.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Another thing I did was, I created games where we had to call out numbers one, two, one, two because everybody was sitting next to their friend, right? So of course you want to sit in a group with your friend. You guys are going to chat like you normally chat. So I mixed up the crowd and then I had a beach ball, two beach balls, and it was two sides of the room. And you had to keep the ball in the air while talking, and then someone had to report out, so.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
That's cool.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Creative conversation, yeah, but almost forced it per se. I got to know everybody's name. Just saying. And I like to sing in the morning and I can't sing. You don't want me to sing but in the morning. Good morning, Renee. Just getting to know people's names. Because when you identify somebody by their name, it's personal.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yes, it is. It's one of our, like, strategies. Always say someone's name because there's nothing better than the sound of your own name being spoken by somebody who is important to you. And as the leader, yes, you're important to them, whether they act like it or not. You are. So I love that.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Every chance I got to talk to someone just to say, how's your day? What's going on with you, especially a new person? How are things going? Do you need anything? What can I do to help? How was your weekend? How are the kids? Have I met one-on-one moments with the evals and people giving me a little bit about them and making sure I'm coming back later with it, right? How was graduation with the kids? What are they getting for Christmas? That's what opened up the conversation.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Wow. Just this fact that you're being so intentional about building a relationship with your team and making it fun, you are taking all of my boxes. Because I am, as an educator, I was a big gamer, okay, we played Jeopardy! And that was back when Jeopardy was actually new and fresh. Okay, now nobody plays Jeopardy! It's like, oh, that's so old. But I actually put my husband's suit jacket on, and I had a little sign that says, I am Alexa Trebek. Okay, at the time, and we played the Jeopardy music, and I was the game master, and we had so much fun with it that people learned because, yeah, they wanted to have fun. They just didn't want to come and listen to somebody's lecture. But you're doing just that, building your team by making it fun. And it's not just about you getting to know them. They're getting to know you too. And it decreases the divide that we see between them. And I hate this when people say the management, okay. And the actual team, like you're part of the team, too.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Absolutely. After Hillsborough every day for fast today, … this interview.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yes, I know, I know, I know, I'm not used to seeing you without your scrub hat or your scrubs on. And I said, oh, this is great. I get to see Simone in her real clothes. I know that developing trust with your team is important. And when you came into this organization, and you referred to the department as a little broken and people weren't sure, okay, why is she smiling all the time? And can we really trust this leader? How would you say? Because I'm thinking of the other leaders who are listening right now or watching who may be in a similar situation. How did you create trust within your team as a new leader in their organization?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
So, when I look back at previous surveys, I identify some of the concerns or the issues that the state identified, such as they didn't know that their manager was here. They didn't, you know, know who their director was. So I may appoint to a short huddle every day. So my team knew I was here and my organization. We have a lot of meetings, and I'm called away a lot. So I made sure I went to the most senior or tenured member of the team and got their trust and asked them what was their concern, and then start working on those concerns. When they would come to me, one of my staff came to me and said she had an issue with her pay. Fixing that concern, showing them that I'm going to show up, that I'm going to fight for them, that start giving them or providing them with trust, doing what I said I was going to do. If I said, this is our goal, this is what we're working on, and I was here to do it. I was walking right with them. That's when they start trusting and you know, and nursing and OR, the best thing is word of mouth. So you just have to do it 1 or 2, and then people start coming and you just being consistent. Being consistent.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
You know what, Simone? Gosh, a couple of things. I am a huge Ted Lasso fan on my computer. I have a little sticker that is the yellow and blue, 'believe.' Okay, huge Ted Lasso fan, but I don't know. Have you seen Ted Lasso?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
No.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Oh, Simone, you would love this series. Seriously. Like you need to watch this. We had just finished watching some really intense shows, the kind that you have bad dreams. And I said to my husband, like, we have to stop anything that's violent or disturbing. I need something fun and happy, and we found Ted Lasso. Somebody recommended it, but they didn't trust him either. So this, you know, football team, they didn't trust him. And you've done exactly what Ted Lasso did. He put a suggestion box in the locker room, and he kept getting, his team would say the water pressure in the showers was too low. They have a scene where they had a game or a practice I can't remember, and they go into the locker room, they turn the showers on and they get blasted. And that was, I think, one of those moments that they're like, wow, we asked for this and he did it. So you said doing what you say you'll do is so incredibly powerful to establish trust, and that's exactly what you did. But how long would you say it took from when you started to where you started to notice or know that people were starting to lighten up and trust you a little bit?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
When my door became the revolving door, yeah, I love it. You know, like I said, I love building trust and talking. And they came and brought me the issues personally. It wasn't whispered down the lane or of the Clarke told me that this person was complaining or things of that nature. I put a suggestion box as well. I bought it from Amazon and made it all pretty, and.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Of course, you did.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Gold stickers. And I wanted to stand out, and I would read the suggestions, and I told myself, I don't know your handwriting. You're all new to me. We type everything. So if you say, I hate Simone, guess what? I don't know who hates you, you know, and read them. And bringing it back to the group, say, what am I? And I call it small wins. It's the small stuff, right? What I can do to make your job easier and make you want to do the job? Get in a coffee pot in a break room. The coffee pot in the break room was broken for over a year. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So everybody brought their own drinks and things of that nature. And it was just an eyesore, and they were upset about it. But the smallest thing, it literally took me three months. But I kept bringing it forth saying, listen, I put the work order in. This person is working on it, giving them updates because I can't fix everything. Look, we want the new, shiniest bed table that we can't afford or it's not on our capital budget, but giving them updates, saying this is what I can do and this is what I can't do, and being honest about it. That's another thing. Always there. Where can I change tomorrow? I know where we are looking for the future, but what can I change today or where can I change tomorrow?

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Well, you're doing something, maybe even without realizing it. You're not making promises you can't keep. You're actually evaluating everything that they're asking for and probably some things that you've observed, too, that need to improve. But you're not promising them everything. You're focusing on those things that you have some control over, some things that you can do, and you're keeping them updated. We do not do a good job. And when I say we, I mean me too. We don't always do a good job keeping people updated on our progress on things that we may be doing behind the scenes, but unless we tell them we're doing them, they make an assumption that we're not doing anything about it. And I think about staffing being short-staffed and your teams complaining that obviously, they're short-staffed. But then I've recommended to leaders that every Friday, you send a status update email. Okay, we had two interviews this week. One of them, we're going to move forward. The other one, no, don't, you know, fit into our culture. Next week I have to do interviews. But it's just a quick this is what I'm doing behind the scenes. So, can you tell us a little bit about how you are communicating even though you're waiting three months for a coffee pot, you know, what are some of the methods you're using to keep your staff updated?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
So we do Friday Facts here, which I love. This is something that I learned coming into Lankenau. So Friday Facts comes out every Friday evening. Myself and my sister's nurse manager put it together. We put a kudos corner but we do update. You do stuff and updates. So I write to every new staff member we have. I write an open position that we have. We promote things such as the referral bonus. You know, I said, listen, bring your friends. You know, you get money for it. Anything that's going on in the rest of the hospital or across the network that people need to know about and things that are specific to our union, you know, any new equipment, any new education coming up. But guess what? Everybody doesn't read their email. We know, right?

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Oh, you're right about that.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Yes. So no, we don't want to kill trees. I am a big fan of also laminate and things putting posters up and every morning and huddle bringing things to life. Listen, guys, please do your CBTs. They're due by June 30th. You know, just bring it. Because once again, conversation. Having those conversations. Yeah. Another thing is funny. You know, you will be surprised about this one. Kronos people forget to swipe down, people forget their time is messed up, and then payroll Monday comes. Everybody wants to run to fix their paycheck. So the Kronos coordinator and I were saying, how could we do this at noon? So every Friday, well, we do trivia every day. That's another game. We play this policy trivia. So when something happens, we take a policy for the week. We put it in a Friday fix to give people the opportunity to read over it. And then, we have a trivia question related to that policy. Well, on top of the trivia question, every Friday, I say to people, okay, what is today? And I'll say It's Friday. And I say, yes, it is. And what do we do on Fridays? We check our Kronos. I go to every single award. Did you guys check the Kronos? Did you check the Kronos? And we have seen so many. So, a decrease in how many hours? People pay because you were afraid if their checks are wrong, you're going to have a problem. But people still. Yeah. So word of mouth emails, of course, staff meetings. And sometimes we got a text. People believe it or not. Listen, the worst part of my job is writing anybody up. You know, we do have to do a performance manage. I don't like doing it. And around here, we say orange doesn't look good on anyone. So we don't want to give you an …, but for mismanagement record. So yeah.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Wow, and you know, you remind me, and I'm going to say the word remind. You know, a chief nursing officer thinks that their job is to be a chief nursing officer. A manager is to manage, a director is to, no, you're all chief, reminding officers no matter what role you have as a leader, you be a supervisor. You could be a manager, you could be a director, you can be a, you know, an executive, but you're all chief reminding officers, and you're smart because just sending an email, you may get about 20% of your team. You have to have multiple methods of communicating, especially something that's important, and it sounds like you're doing just that. Okay. I do need to ask you. You come in. They didn't trust you at first. You built that trust. You make it fun. You're doing all these great things. How do you keep your team engaged? Is it just with the activities that you're doing and the trivia, or is there any other techniques you have for keeping them engaged?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
So like I said, I'd be consistent. I'm very consistent. I do like to play the games. We do provide prizes for the games. We pick something like a goal. First place on time starts, for example. It's a thing for everybody in the operating room, I don't care near and far. It's very important, but you have to get it from the end user. You have to get the ideas from the end user because that's how they're engaged. I can tell you anything. Whether you decide to follow me is a different question or a different answer. But if I ask you for your thoughts, your opinion, how you will fix it, and I adopt that idea, you're going to be more engaged than that. Yeah, you're going to want it to succeed. You want success. So asking myself, okay, this is our issue. This is our problem. And how can we fix it? Okay. Another thing keep my staff engaged. They wouldn't feel. They felt like they didn't have a say. It was so many things going on around them, rules being made, policies, and one thing, and many leaders may feel this way. Viewing the council in awe is very difficult because we are needed in our surgeries. We are needed in our rooms. But rebirth in that thought of this is your unit. You are the managers, captains, and leaders of the unit. Let's make this work for us, not for the rest of the world. How do we make it for us? And when you have the end user because staff talk to staff, right? You have the end user going to the end users and then bringing it back to the leader and saying, okay, now how can we make this happen? How can we create or fix these goals or meet our goals? We're engaged. They want to do it. The competitions create that engagement because they're like, oh my God, what's next? What are we doing next? They're looking for the next thing. Our summer first case on time start trivia is baskets. We improved our first case on-time starts. When I first started here, we were at like 54%. I don't know if it was just the culture. You know, the surge is being invited to the rooms or what it was. We had a meeting. My boss said, you know what's wrong? We need to get to 70, and 70 became 72, then 75. And now we hit an all-time high of 86%. Now, granted, I gave out some cool baskets, but they didn't know. They had no idea. They had no idea. But just the fact of how can we do this, guys? What can we do to make this better? Give me your ideas, give me your thoughts. And then adapting those same thoughts and ideas allows us to be a part of interviews. Asking them, hey, do you want this to be your colleague? It's not just some old decision. I don't get to make this decision alone. This is your unit too. That's how rocky the team would be.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Well, what you're referring to is something that I discuss when we're working with teams, this is really collaborative problem-solving. It's not the boss solving all the issues. You're collaborating with your team, and you're presenting it to them in a way that makes them want to provide input. You know, this is your team, this is your department, your culture. And we say this all the time, like, what do you want your culture to look like? How do you always want to treat each other? How do you never want to treat each other? It's really they're a part of it. It can't just be the leader making these decisions. And you've done a really great job with this. And Simone, as we start to wrap up, I can imagine that there are leaders listening right now who are thinking, I want to be just like Simone, like I want to have a culture of engaged, positive human beings. You've done so many different things. If you could give them advice if they want to start working on the culture, what advice would you give them? Where should they start?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
I would say, start building relationships, and that takes time. Because just like any relationship, if someone adopts you so fast may not be real, you want them to feel. You want the realness, you want the, I don't know, or the nontalkers or the side eye, or I may not do it, don't give up. Be consistent. You can try different things because you have to. Sometimes every method will not work, but everything is figure-outable. Find someone or something to keep you motivated because if you don't need it, you'll need it because it can become difficult and frustrating. But there's always a process, and more times than not, it will work out. It always works.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Oh my gosh, yeah. We say this a lot with our consulting clients. When we start this journey with them, we're with them for a year. And the first couple of months are rough because we're asking them to, you know, think differently, be different, the whole team and get uncomfortable because we're starting to confront destructive behaviors, but we tell them all the time, trust the process. There's a process that you have to go through, and that's exactly what you're saying, Simone is try something, but stick with it. Be consistent, take your time. And I want to reinforce what you said initially, and that is to build a relationship with your team. It is so much harder to be mean to someone who you know, who you understand beyond the work environment. So, as much as you can build a relationship with your team, it'll help you to become a stronger team. So okay, if somebody wants to connect with you, Simone, what's the best way for them to do that?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
Email. I am on LinkedIn as Dr. Simone Nicholson, recently changed. My email at work is Nicholson, n i c h o l s o n @ m l h s.org, which stands for Main Land Health Service .org. My personal email is also on my LinkedIn.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Awesome. Well, we'll make sure we have the link to Simon's LinkedIn profile and her both of her emails in the show notes. So make sure you go to the show notes and check that out to connect with Simone, even if it's just to say congratulations on earning your doctoral degree. That is such a big deal. Okay, are you doing anything to celebrate? Or I should say, what are you doing to celebrate?

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
I am leaving on Friday to go to Portugal for ten days.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Oh my goodness. Oh my God.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
For a year I've been planning this for a year. I am super excited. I'm leaving the kids behind. It is a girl's trip.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Goosebumps. I love it.

Dr. Simone Nicholson:
I told my staff, to listen, and hit everything out of me. Now, whatever we need to fix, let's fix it before I go. They know I will be away. So thank you so much for having me, Renee. I enjoyed this time, and it's a pleasure.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Oh my gosh, I wrote down so many notes and I love a lot of the activities that you do. But I also love your philosophy and how you approach leadership, team development, and bringing joy back into the workplace. So Simone, thank you so much for being here, and thanks to you who are listening or you're watching, you know, the culture you have right now did not get this way overnight, and it's certainly not going to change overnight. But as Simone has shown you, it can change. The question is how do you want it to change? So, if you like this podcast, if you could please give us a rating review and share it with others. So thanks so much for tuning in. Take care everyone.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Thank you for listening to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. If you found this podcast helpful, we invite you to click the Subscribe button and tune in every 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 us at HealthyWorkforceInstitute.com. Until our next cup of coffee, be kind, take care, and stay connected.

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