EP 53: The Power Of Trust: How Leadership Drives Employee Retention

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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, as bullying and incivility happen because they can, and it really takes dedicated leaders like you to do your part to stop it. But it's not just bullying and incivility. Okay, yeah, we need to address that, but cultivating a healthy culture involves so much more. And today I'm very honored to be having a coffee chat with Dr. Katherine Meese. Katherine, welcome to the show.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Thank you so much. It's a joy to be here.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Really excited to be able to talk with you just because your background and the work that you do is just so in alignment with what, not only what we're doing at the Healthy Workforce Institute, but what the literature and the studies are showing. This is what we need to focus on. So, I want to tell you a little bit more about Katherine. She is a scholar, okay, in the field of organizational behavior in healthcare, and she also focuses on leadership and well-being. And those should be ding, ding, ding for you right now because those are really hot topics. She is the best-selling author of three books, including her newest volume, The Human Margin: Building Foundations of Trust, with our mutual friend, Quint Studer, and I have it on my list. I've got to read it because I was just looking at just the summary of it, and I thought, oh my gosh, I think every leader needs to read this book. And you're also an assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, and you really teach and mentor graduate, and doctoral, and executive students. So you really have your finger on the pulse of what's happening out there. Because it's funny, even when I was in my graduate program, I was in a lot of classes with other executives. Oh, we talk, okay? So we talk about everything that maybe we wouldn't talk about in our workplaces. And so I'm sure you have learned a lot, not only with the research that you've done but with the mentoring and the teaching that you've done with this group. So, I know you've done a lot of research on trust. All right. Tell us what you found out. So, tell us a little bit more about how trust can affect the workplace and what you've discovered with your research.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Trust is nothing new. We all know that it's important for leaders to build trust. But I think what we found in our research that sort of shocked me in my rerunning the results, let me just make sure that I'm doing this right, is that of all the things we were really looking at, turnover and tension, right? What causes people to want to leave an organization? And of all of the things that we measured trust in senior leadership was the number two predictor of whether or not someone wants to leave the organization. And trust and supervisor didn't even make the top ten, nor did compensation. And so for me, it was really interesting because there's so much conversation around, Oh, it's the manager. It's all about the supervisor relationship. And yes, that matters, and it's important, but I didn't expect to see that senior leader trust take such a prominent role. That was a shocking finding for me.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Wow. Because you're right. I'm, I always say, It's that frontline manager. It's who the boss is in that department that determines the culture. And while that is in part true, the role of the senior leader, according to your research, plays an even bigger role. And actually, though it makes sense. I had a client, we were on site doing work there, and we were talking with their team members or staff, and they said, What makes them feel appreciated is when the senior leaders actually spend time in their department, that they come and they round in their department. Okay, so we need to unpack this a little bit more. So tell us more about that senior leader role and how they help to either establish trust or not.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Yeah. So I think when we started to unpack this a little bit more, another way to think about it because I'm really, I was trying to understand what is it about that senior leader role that's so different than the manager role of trust. And so when we started to unpack it, what we found was that, really, you might rephrase it like this. Of course, your relationship with your manager matters. But ultimately, if I don't trust that this organization is run by people that are honest and ethical, I'm not going to stay here. I don't feel safe, right? My manager can only protect me from so much if I feel like the people above are not trustworthy people. And so I think that's why we ultimately see that plays a bigger role in people leaving very much to your point about rounding. When we ask people, how do you want to be recognized or appreciated, it was very much the same as you've mentioned. People said, I want senior leadership to come down here and see what they're asking me to do. It wasn't visibility from their manager; it wasn't visibility from their director level. It was senior leadership. And I think that desire or that phrasing is reflective of the bigger desire of I want to be seen by the organization and I want to feel like I matter. I want to be seen, and I want to matter. And until the very top sees what I do here, I'm not going to feel that.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
This is probably a big shift for some of our senior leaders who have been in their role for a long time. We refer to them as the C-suite, and they've got their executive offices, and sometimes those offices are not even in the hospital or in the organization. They're off-site. Now, I would say, I don't know, maybe most of them are on-site, but I've worked in organizations that the C-suite, their office was in a different building. And I think back in the day, there was that separation, and that was the norm. But I'm curious, do you think it's maybe the different generations right now? We have a lot of people who want to have a relationship with their executives, where in the past, as long as we didn't hear from them, we were, okay? They showed up in our department; we knew that there was something bad. But I don't know. Do you think there's a shift, or can it be a difficult shift if you've been a senior leader for a long time, decreasing that gap or that disconnect and actually being present with your people? Do you think they'll struggle with that?

Dr. Katherine Meese:
I think so. And that's really some of the main pushback that I hear from leaders when I'm encouraging rounding, when I'm encouraging greater visibility. And when I say visibility, leader visibility. I don't mean that the leader is being seen. I mean that people are being seen by their leader, right? People are wanting to be visible to their leadership, not just to see the leader. And so I think that's a key distinction as well. It's not about you being visible and present as the leader. It's about you seeing, acknowledging, and honoring the work experiences of others when you're out and about. So that's thing one. Thing two, I think, is that one definition of trust that was proposed by Charles Feltman and Brene Brown in a conversation that they had. And I'll summarize it by saying, Trust is what matters to me, is safe with you. And so if you don't know what matters to me, then you don't know how to protect it. And so by that senior leader engaging more with the front line, you're able to see what are some of the things that are happening in your daily work life that matter to you, that aren't going well, and how can I advocate for improvement? And so that's a way to build that trust. But I do think people want to be seen and valued. And the bigger organizations get and the more layers of leadership and hierarchy we have, the farther that distance is where eventually people start to feel like the organization doesn't even know I exist. That senior leader is a proxy for the big organization.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Wow. Okay, this all makes a lot of sense to me. And it's not just, okay, so the people want to be seen by their leaders, and they also want to believe that, first of all, they even care about what matters to them, right? It's not just a nurse or a tech or a manager or whatever, but educator, but no, you're a human being. And what matters to you matters to me, or it's safe with me. I just love that. I think that's so powerful. Do you have any? And I might be jumping ahead. But if you're, because we know a lot of senior leaders listen to this podcast. If you have a senior leader right now listening who's, Okay, I don't know that I'm doing this. Do you have any practical strategies for them to start helping their employees feel seen by them and help convey that, you know what? You're important to me. What matters to you matters to me.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Yeah. So, I think there are a couple of things that leaders can do. One, if leaders aren't in the habit of rounding, that needs to be thing number one. I think a lot of leaders, particularly in healthcare, got out of practice during the pandemic because we were trying to conserve PPE, we were trying to limit exposure, but it's time to get back to it. And I think some people are a little fuzzy on whether or not rounding actually helps. Is it, is this just something that's popular to do or is it actually making a difference? And luckily, there's a very large study, over 16,000 participants, that found that high-quality leader rounding improves safety, culture, workforce engagement, burnout climate, readiness for improvement, growth opportunities, and participation in decision-making. So the science is there, right? I think what gets in the way, particularly in large organizations, is people feel like they have to go on this sort of epic journey to each unit and spend a ton of time there. And so they're saying, Okay, if I've got 52 units in my hospital and I'm spending four hours a unit, I'm going to see people once a year. And so my encouragement to leaders is, don't make it this big event where you show up and it's hours of, I don't want to see you for hours, we've got stuff to do. Maybe block off the last 30 or 45 minutes of your day on your calendar and say, The last part of the day, I'm going to walk, I'm going to go to a unit, and I'm going to hit five units a week, and I'm going to ask a few questions that can open up a conversation. Sometimes, in some organizations, we have gotten so rigid about rounding that we've got a clipboard or a device, and we're filling out these specific questions, and we're documenting it, and it gets in the way of that relational piece. And more importantly, it gets in the way of you seeing people's lived experience, right? And I would encourage leaders to start with a few good conversation openers. Those might be: What matters to you, right? What matters to you? You might find that what matters to me is my ability to get promoted. What matters to me is my ability to leave on time so I can make it to my kid's soccer game. What matters to me is being able to take care of my elderly parent. You don't know until you ask. And then I also like the question, What does support for me look like? Or I work for you; what do you want me to work on? So some of those things really get more at relationship than documentation. And I think that's really the key: short duration, frequent, and make it about relationship.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Okay. I want to take what you just said and I want to put it on a billboard. I want to blast it to the world because this is the problem that I think we fall in, like it's a trap that, Oh, I have to round, and it's like a checkbox, check. Yep, I rounded on this department, I rounded on that department, and it's not meaningful. It's just like the whole recognition thing. Meaningful recognition versus just I have to give something to someone so it makes them check. Yep. I did meaningful recognition because you said it's high-quality rounding. And I have a few colleagues, some of my clients who I've worked with, that they've actually done exactly what you're recommending. One of my clients, Emily Chase, Dr. Emily Chase from University of Chicago Medical Center, she does this thing where I don't know if it's once every two weeks, but she will spend four hours in a department like she puts scrubs on, and she works with them. So she wants to, they say, walk a mile in my shoes. And she's actually worked whole shifts with her nurses so that she can see what it's like for them. Okay, and now it's been very powerful, and she actually has all of her senior leaders doing this. And I interviewed her, and I'll make sure that I put a link to that episode in our show notes for this episode. But then it can be as simple as Dr. Gerald Bryant. He actually had, he called it Java with Gerald, and he would pick a department, and he would bring coffee, and he would sit and chat with them. All right, tell me what's happening. Okay. What's going on here? And I love your question. What does support look like to you? So important because you may say, Oh, I support my people, but how do you know if you haven't asked what support looks like? We have a doctor, Carl Curtin, he does Coffee with Carl, and then Dr. Deanna Dent does Donuts with Deanna, but it doesn't even have to be that. But if you can make it fun and if you can make it something that's a little quirky, I think it's great if you can do that. But to your point, Katherine, just put it on your calendar. At the end of every day, you're going to stop by a unit and just spend a little bit of time with them. It doesn't have to be anything as grandiose as maybe what I just shared, but it has to be thoughtful and intentional.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
It has to be thoughtful. And I think we should also be honest about: it's going to be awkward at first. It's going to feel weird. You're going to be uncomfortable. I think we just have to get past that. It's not, if you aren't going to welcome you with open arms and say, We've been waiting for you, you might get some heat or hostility or people will be skeptical. Are you here to spy on us or get in trouble? Or who are you? And expect it to be uncomfortable. But I think it's really important. There are also some natural flows within a unit that could or departments that could be helpful to get connected into. For example, if there's a morning huddle on the unit, what a great time to go and to add 45 seconds to that huddle and say, I would love to hear people brag on their colleagues: What did somebody do well, yesterday? And then, in real time, you're able to see what people are up to that's good that you can celebrate and highlight. Another possibility is to email the unit manager, the director the night before or the day before and say, Hey, can you tell me a few good things that your team did in the last week or two that I could call out specifically when I come by tomorrow? And it's a win for everybody. So I think a little preparation and then the frequency piece is important.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yeah. Being consistent so that, because this is what happens a lot with the people who we've been working with, is that all of a sudden the leaders will start rounding. And then, if they're not consistent, people will say, Oh, it's just another flavor of the month. Oh, they all went to a workshop, and they were told that, Oh, this is the way to build this stronger in my workshop. Yeah, they went to Katherine's workshop, okay? And now they're all going to do this rounding. But the problem is if you're not consistent, they're going to see it as almost a bait and switch. If you're going to do it, commit to it. Maybe it's starting out once a week, okay? Maybe you can't do five days a week. Maybe it's just once a week or once every two weeks. Whatever it is, once you put your stake in the ground that you're going to do this, you got to commit to it, or else you're going to lose trust with the people who you're trying to build trust with.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
And I think that, Renee, is a really important thing to think about. Sometimes the activities that we do, thinking that it's trust building, can be trust diminishing, or they can be misinterpreted. So we might think, okay, if I'm communicating in this way all the positive things about the organization so that people trust me as a senior leader because I'm running this well and it's completely tone deaf to maybe suffering or challenge that's happening in another part of the organization, then that becomes trust diminishing. I think that's really critical to think about.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Are there any other things that leaders do that they think are building trust, but they're actually having the opposite effect? Because I'm sure you've seen it all.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Yes. One thing that I see commonly is this untold story that happens in organizations. So humans are sense-making beings, right? If we have two disconnected points of information, we will find a way to connect them in a story. Doesn't matter if it's true or not, but we will weave a story together in our minds. That is just how humans behave. And so sometimes I'll see organizations that are communicating positive messages, accomplishments, etc. over here, which is good. And they think, Okay, I'm communicating. That's a trust-building activity. I'm celebrating our wins. That could be a trust-building activity. But then over here, we have something else going on in the organization that leaves people with some confusion. So, I'll give you an example. And this is a little hard to visualize. An organization I was working with was going through a financial crisis. COVID cares funding was expiring. They were expecting a major budget deficit that year, okay? So a lot of communication from the CFO's office about financial crisis. We've got a no raises, we've got to increase productivity, etc.. So that's story one. Story two is we got this huge grant from the state to build a new research facility, and it's going to be state of the art, right? So, from the leader's perspective, that was a huge win for the organization, right? Brought in this resource that we wouldn't have had. We're going to have all these great things to move our organization forward. So you can imagine 3D printing, golden shovels, the whole nine yards, right? So because those messages weren't connected in a meaningful way, right, the story that people came up with was these greedy, evil people upstairs only care about shiny new buildings and not my compensation or my raise or my work experience. Now, in reality, if you spend state-granted money for a specific purpose on salaries, you will go to prison. You have to be very creative with accounting. And creative accountants go to jail. And we know that's not a thing, but the average employee doesn't know that. And so that sort of lack of alignment in communication or thinking about what is the story we're telling, not just what is the information we're providing can be a major trust-damaging activity.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Whoa, okay. This is huge. Because this miscommunication happens every single day, and people don't even realize it until they get bit later on. But exactly to your point, people make a lot of assumptions. And if you don't tell them the why and you don't tell them the backstory, or you don't give them any details, they will make something up. And as humans, we're designed to be negative. The negativity bias will come up with something negative. It's very similar to some of the work that we do with conflict resolution. It's this true conflict or false conflict? I'll never forget: if it's false conflict, let it go. If you have no control over something, let it go. And we find that people will get all bent out of shape and up in arms. Sometimes it's either they don't have any control over it or what you were saying is somebody didn't explain the reasons. Somebody didn't connect the dots between, okay, we can't give any raises because financially we're in trouble. Oh my gosh, look at this new shiny object that we got without letting people know how that happened. Because yeah, I think that's spot on. People make assumptions, and they just don't know. So guess what you have to tell them.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Yeah. And I think the challenging thing with that is that the untold story has tremendous power, right? It doesn't even matter that it's not true. It will grow legs and run away, and you might become the villain. And there's a lot of damage that can happen. But I think I want to touch on or build on a point that you mentioned that people don't know until after they've been built. And I think that's another great opportunity for rounding is to test out some of these on people in the organization before you do the big communication rollout. So I can imagine a leader in that organization on a normal round, on a normal unit saying, Hey, I wanted to get your opinion about something. We just got this big grant from the state. We can't use it for anything else but this research facility. We want to celebrate that. But we also know people are struggling because inflation is bad, and we can't give raises. What's a good way for us to tell that story? And I think like disaster would have been averted. And the best time to find out when you're going to have people screaming, Not fair, or we're so angry is before you send out the communication, right?

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yes, and I know that a reason that we don't have those conversations and we're not being proactive is because everybody is, let's just say, nobody has the time to do that right now. It seems like people's, the scope of work has expanded. They have less and less time to do the things, I would say, the right way. And what you're suggesting is when you've got a big change like that, or you've got something happening in your organization, you have to first stop and think, How might people respond to this? And is there something that we can do now, being proactive to, you're right, get their input? This is happening. We have, we're not sure how this is going to be perceived by everyone. What can we do instead of dealing with trying to do some service recovery later? So, I always say be proactive. It's less time to do, have those conversations up front than to do the damage control after. But is there any other reasons that you see why senior leaders just don't even approach things like big change in this way?

Dr. Katherine Meese:
I think some of it is that there's so many issues that senior leaders have to deal with that are on fire. And this doesn't feel on fire until later. And so I think it's always easy to put it to the back burner. And I think most people feel like today they're doing more with less. They have less time. They've got more things on their plate. But I also feel like there's a lot of stupid meetings that were involved in. Meetings, I'm just … And so we're going to get rid of some stupid meetings. And I think really rethinking meeting culture in the organization is important. Does it have to be 30 minutes? Does it need to be in person? Can we resolve this in a phone call? Are there ways to free up the calendar a little bit, and to model that for your team to say, It matters to me. It's my priority. There's time on the calendar where we're out with our people doing the work. I think senior leaders have to model that, and they have to give permission in space for the people below them to be able to access that. So maybe it's saying, Hey, we don't do meetings from 1 to 4, and I want you out with your people. I don't want to see you meeting on the calendar from 1 to 4.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yes. And then you have to deal with the people. So then who's going to do my work during that time? That's the time I do my work. It's okay, people. Okay. Because I'm guilty of that, too. I'll say, Oh, yeah, take a day off. Okay. Then who's going to do my work or take Fridays off or whatever that is? It's, especially if they don't see their senior leaders' role modeling that, if they don't see them making that commitment too, cutting back on, you know, unnecessary meetings, doing the rounding, then it's easy for them to make up excuses why they can't do that. And I think that's such a powerful, it's not even a strategy for all of you in an organization who are in a leadership role. If you're not creating thinking time or what other people refer to as white space. So look at your calendar. If it's all colored and you have no white space on your calendar, where are you going to have the time to do any thinking, strategic planning, just being proactive about something, anticipating how somebody might react? And if you're not doing that as a senior leader, your frontline managers aren't doing that either?

Dr. Katherine Meese:
No. And most humans have, unless you meditate all the time, okay, most women have about four hours of focus a day. So how are you going to use it? So yeah, you can't have the calendar jam-packed at every moment. Renee, there's another element of trust that I'm seeing that's sort of, I think has a generational component. Want to explore that? I think.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yes! Are you kidding me? I just interviewed someone about generational challenges, and I think that episode's coming out in a couple of weeks, but this is really impacting the workplace, the culture, and leaders really need to be skilled and, I don't know, not managing the different generations, but understanding them and learning from them. Yes, I would love your input on this.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Yes, I think the research is really mixed on generational differences. A lot of times we blame things on generations that are just humans wanting human things at work. I think we're also seeing a lot of change post-COVID as people reevaluated. Oh my gosh, my life is short. What am I going to spend my time doing? Not stupid stuff at work. And so some of those things are not generational, right? But one of the things that I'm seeing that I think has a generational component is this much-elevated desire for transparency from leaders, particularly around their decision-making. So let me give an example, particularly for Gen Z, but also for some millennials. They were born and raised at a time where technology was prolific, the internet was a thing 24-over-seven news cycle, etc., but also where there was an awareness that anyone can put anything online. And so you have to be very suspicious. My kids are six and eight now, and they are already taking, getting education at elementary school about how to find a trustworthy source on the internet. I know, right? I was like in my 20s. With that, these new generations have grown up with, I think, a healthy skepticism of what information am I getting? Where is it coming from? What's the source? What's the context? Because they've had to constantly filter just a vast amount of information that's coming at them in a way that other generations haven't had to. And so I think where I'm seeing that play out in leadership is that I don't want to just know what decision you've made. I want to know what data you used, who you talked to, who was at the table, what options you considered and didn't take, why. There's this much lower willingness to accept a decision at face value than I think we have seen historically. And so where I see leaders get tripped up sometimes is they say, Okay, we've made this decision, and it's the right one, and we're moving on. When people are like, Wait a minute, we need to do some investigating here. And that's the thing that I'm seeing leaders struggle with these sort of demands for radical transparency from their younger employees because it's new.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
I never thought of it from that perspective, but it makes total sense that back in the day and I'm a Gen Xer, whatever my boss told me, Okay. Whatever decision our CFO and CEO and they all made, okay. But not so much anymore. And I think that's really important no matter what level of leadership you're at. And it is something that we reinforce with the leaders who we work with. If you're going to ask your employees to do something, you have to tell them why, okay? You have to give them the back story, tell them the reason. But what you're talking about, Katherine, is really taking it to the next level. Here's the data, here's how, what resources we access. It's not just why, but to provide them with a level of detail that maybe we're not comfortable or used to providing. But again, I'm going to go back to the more proactive you can be upfront, the less damage control you have to do on the back end. Wow! This is, I think, not only incredibly important for leaders to recognize that they do have employees who want the details, and they want to know the data source. I never connected it, though, to the generations and the technology and the filtering and all of that. So that's so fascinating to me.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Okay, I'll tell you when, where this thought came to me. Okay. I have a family member who is in the boomer generation and routinely sends me links to whatever crazy news stories that are clearly not real. And so I have to sometimes gently respond, Okay, did you notice that the website was I found Sasquatch.com, but there's not even like a registering that this might, it's on the internet, so it must be true. And so I think that sort of got me thinking about how differently even I approach, and I'm an elder millennial, if you will, so how differently than I approach whether or not I believe something that's sent to me and I think people are doing that, sort of making that calculus in the workforce. And Gen Z, is that on steroids, right? They were from day one.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Oh my gosh. I am so like the boomer. I believe, now, I don't necessarily believe everything I read, but my tendency is to believe it until someone says, Wait a minute. And I've done this. I used to teach a nursing research course, and I would give all of my students a research article, and I would say, Okay, read the article and tell me if you would make a recommendation in the change of practice based on this article. And yes, I would, and here's my reason. And it's because education is important. And they pulled out some of the things from the article. And then I would say, Okay, the sample size was eight. Nurses had more than 20 years experience, all working the day shift. So maybe I'm better than I think, okay. Because, but I think I almost have to force myself to be a little bit more skeptical. But the point in all of this is if you're in a leadership role, senior leader, frontline leader, you have to take a look at your team and recognize that you can actually say, Okay, this is what we're going to be doing. And some people will say, Okay, let's do it. But you got a lot of people that's not good enough for them. And to provide them with that level of detail and be prepared to do that. I always say, like in any audience, you've got people who are left-brained and people who are right-brained. So you got to appease both. You got to tell the story. You've got to give them the data. And you've got to find a way that message really relates to both groups, and now we're adding the generations in there, too. Okay. We've talked about a lot. We really started out looking at trust. We've talked about leader rounding and the importance of that and how to do that. We've talked about some of the different generations and how it impacts our communication. So as we wrap up, if there is a leader, and we'll just say leader could be senior leader, frontline leader who's listening to this and says, Holy cow, I've got some work to do, Katherine, what would you recommend as first sort of practical step that they can take?

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Yeah, first things first. If you're not measuring employee experiences in your organization and asking questions specifically about trust, that's thing one, right? You need to know how this is going, and that will help you identify hotspots or pockets of distrust. And that is your first thing of identifying where those areas that I need to have more visibility. Again, not people viewing you, but you having visibility of the employees in that space. And then I think the other thing that can be very helpful is if there are other leaders, maybe in your senior leadership team or colleagues or even subordinates where you have a good and trusting relationship, you might say, I am learning that there are some things, perhaps that I do that are diminishing trust, my trust relationships. I'm not exactly sure what those behaviors are. And I would love some feedback. What are some things that we as an organization are doing that are causing people to lose trust? If you don't think people will give you an honest answer, like you want the two drinks in happy hour, answer, right? If you don't think people will give you an honest answer, then ask an open-ended question on your next engagement survey. What do we do that damages trust, and I guarantee you people will tell you if it's anonymous. If it's not anonymous, they may not tell you.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yeah.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
So I think if you're not measuring and capturing, that's thing one. Thing two is, I think apologizing and forgiveness is so important. Sometimes, and particularly in healthcare, we just, we make a decision that's maybe suboptimal, or we do something that doesn't go super well, and we just move on and hope everyone forgets about it. And what I found in looking through thousands of employee comments over many years is these things hang on like a barnacle. Like they're not going anywhere. And so there's that thing that Janis did in 2014 that still showing up in the employee engagement results. And so we know that asking for forgiveness and being forgiven and forgiving others all have good scientific benefits. They improve physical and mental health; they improve organizational performance, creativity, and innovation. And so if you don't have a practice of apologizing, often when you mess up, that's the next top thing to be doing. And so I would say those are two … to start. And then from there, the third thing I would say is making sure that your middle management team knows how to answer hard questions. Sometimes we see reduced trust in the senior leader, because that middle level of leadership gets asked hard questions by their employees. They don't really know how to answer. And so they throw you under the bus, right?

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Exactly.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Yes, I asked for your raise, but those greedy, evil people upstairs said no. And so that they save face. And so get them together and say, What hard questions are you hearing? How can we work out an answer together that positions the organization? And that is authentic because, ultimately, that backfires, right? If I feel like the organization is run by evil, greedy people, I'm not going to stick around. So, I think those three things can really be instrumental in starting to build or rebuild trust in the Lord.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
This is so helpful because I know a lot of leaders are struggling with this, and you've included so many great strategies. You always start with where you are. Collect the data. Ask for feedback. Find out how you're doing as far as trust. When you do mess up, apologize, forgive each other, and forgive yourself. Because none of us are perfect, we're all learning, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you saying that we need to make sure those middle managers, those frontline managers, that we help them know how to answer hard questions, because I've seen this so many times where they do exactly what you said, Katherine. They will blame it on administration. It's not me. I want to give you a raise, I was told. And it's undermining not only the organization, but it's also undermining your authority and credibility as a leader, too, that you can't step up and actually have, be able to answer those questions in a thoughtful way without throwing somebody else under the bus. It just really, you lose your credibility. Okay. This was such a great conversation. I hope every single leader in the world listens to this right now because we're in, I think, a trust crisis, especially in healthcare, and the practical strategies that you've shared with us, is really going to get every leader who's listening to this or watching this on the right path towards a trusting environment. Okay. People want to connect with you, and I know they will. What's the best way for them to do that, Katherine?

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn. I also write a LinkedIn newsletter every other week to try to make the science of human performance really digestible and not boring and easy to implement. So those would be two good ways, or on my website, which is KatherineMeese.com.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
So, I was preparing for this, and I was all over her LinkedIn profile, and her newsletter, and her website. It's just fantastic resources. So I highly recommend that you connect with Katherine on LinkedIn, check out her website and we'll have all those links in the show notes. But I do have to bring up. I was looking at your keynote topics on your website, and the one that caught my eye was lavender oil won't fix things, and it's really strategies for burnout. I'm like, oh my gosh. Yes. Like, look, I love me some good lavender oil. But it's not going to fix your burnout problem. Like I always say, Giving everybody pizza is not really considered meaningful recognition. You want to give people pizza; give them pizza. But you have to look at what is the real problem and fix the real problem. Not, I don't know, tell people to fix themselves. Yes! Oh my gosh. This was so helpful. Thank you so much for being a guest on my show. It was really nice having this conversation with you. Like I said, I think a lot of the work that you're doing is in alignment with everything that we're doing here at the Healthy Workforce Institute, and I'm really grateful that Quint introduced us and helped make this happen. So thanks, Quint, if you're listening. Yay!

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Thanks, Renee. It's been great to be with you.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Thank you. All right. And thank you, listeners who are either listening right now or if you're watching. We know you're busy. However, what this tells me is that if you're listening or watching, it's because you are committing to developing yourself as a leader so that you can better lead your team. So, I just want to thank you for being here, too. And if you really liked this episode, if you can, please rate it, post a review, and share it with others. Remember, as we started this session, bullying and incivility happen because they can. It takes dedicated leaders like you to do something to stop it. So, thanks for being here, everyone. Take care.

Dr. Katherine Meese:
Bye.

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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