Megan Hunter:
Welcome to Its All Your Fault on True Story FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions with those who may have a high-conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, Bill Eddy.
Bill Eddy:
Hi, everybody.
Megan Hunter:
We're the co-founders of The High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. In this episode, we're joined by special guest, Catherine Mattice, author of Back Off! Your Kick-Ass Guide to Ending Bullying @ Work. She's also the founder of Civility Partners in La Mesa, California. I have a couple of notes first. If you have a question about high-conflict situations or a high-conflict person, send them to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com, or on our website at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast, where you can also find the show notes and links for today's show as well. Please give us a rate or review and tell your friends, colleagues, or family about us, especially if they're dealing with a high-conflict situation. We're very grateful. Now, let's talk high conflict. Welcome, Catherine. We've really been looking forward to this conversation with you.
Catherine Mattice:
Me too. I've been looking forward to talking to you.
Megan Hunter:
Well, good. We have a lot in common, and so I think it's going to be a really fantastic discussion. A little bit about Catherine, she founded Civility Partners in 2008 as a result of working in a toxic environment. I think she's going to share a little bit about that with us. She's since served a wide array of clients with consulting, training and coaching services, and she's written three books, one of which Ken Blanchard, who's the guru of workplace, called it, "The most comprehensive and valuable handbook on the topic of workplace bullying." She's also been cited in media outlets like Forbes.com, Inc magazine, Entrepreneur, USA today and she's appeared as a guest on some venues like NPR and CNN. She's active in the International Association for Workplace Bullying and Harassment, and is one of the four founding members of The National Workplace Bullying Coalition, which is a non-profit organization focused on ending workplace bullying, which sounds absolutely fantastic. Is there anything we should add to that Catherine?
Catherine Mattice:
No, other than my date of birth and social security number.
Megan Hunter:
Okay, well, we'll skip those, but anyway. I was reading the news over the weekend, as I usually do, and I read an article titled Times Are Edgy, Workmates Are More Belligerent- So How Do We Learn To Get Along? The writer whose last name I'm pretty sure I will butcher here, Virginia Backaitis. She cites a 2021 survey that found that around 89% of employees from a diverse range of industries reported experiencing conflict at work, and that they spend an average of three-and-a-half hours per week dealing with it. Now, it's no surprise as global anxiety has increased in the past two years that it's spilling over into the workplace.
Here at HCI, we've seen an increase in workplace training requests, which frequently have to do with bullying behavior. What comes to mind for me is a recent situation that was rather shocking with someone I was speaking with, a potential client. There were accusations of an alleged workplace bully who shoved co-workers into walls, stalked them, and even punched them. I guess we call that a bully plus or an extra bully, but extraordinarily extreme behavior. Bullying comes in many forms, as I'm sure you'll be sharing with us today, Catherine. So first, you've been working in the field of workplace conflict as the founder of Civility Partners and for quite some time. I think you started around the same time we did founding High Conflict Institute around 2008. Is that right? Yeah?
Catherine Mattice:
That's right.
Megan Hunter:
Then you wrote this kick-ass book called Back Off! Your Kick-Ass Guide to Ending Bullying @ Work around 2012, so I'm really interested to hear how you got into this line of work.
Catherine Mattice:
It's a great story. As you mentioned earlier, I was working in an organization that was toxic. Actually, it wasn't a toxic culture, it was one individual all by himself was making it toxic. I was the director of human resources and he was also a director and we both reported directly to the president, so he wasn't my boss, he was my peer. I personally felt bullied by him. He definitely micromanaged or attempted to micromanage me, even though I didn't report to him. He liked to yell and get snarky. It was clear that he really liked certain people and if he didn't like you, he made that very clear, so just a lot of rough behavior that was distracting and frustrating.
As the director of HR, I was hearing all of the complaints from people he was doing this too. They were looking for my help as HR. Then I also personally felt bullied, so I was experiencing this as an individual being targeted as well as the HR representative. I would go to the president and talk to him about the behavior, and the president did what I've learned since, many leaders do, which was to say, essentially, "He's very valuable here. We need him. Just let it roll off your back. It's not that bad. Why does it bother you? I love to be the bigger person." I'm thinking, "Why do I have to be the bigger person? Why can't you just talk to him? Why-
Megan Hunter:
Right.
Catherine Mattice:
... is it all on me?" During that time, I decided to get my master's degree here in San Diego at San Diego State and ended up doing all of my graduate research on the topic of workplace bullying. I jokingly seriously say, "I have a master's degree in workplace bullying, so I can tell you how to do it really well, or how to get rid of it," so that's it. Then after grad school, I decided this was a problem that needed to be solved. Back then, we definitely, weren't talking about workplace bullying at work, it was really more around harassment. Against everyone else telling me I probably shouldn't start a business around workplace bullying I did, and here I am.
Bill Eddy:
Wow. Well, it's just really fascinating how this has grown so much and you are timing's really good. We got into dealing with high-conflict personalities right around the same time, and I remember a couple years later, somebody said, "Bill, are you still dealing with that?" It's like society seems to have changed right in the direction that we all are trying to help with. So you've had now many years dealing with workplace culture, dealing with bullies, and I must say, I enjoy getting your emails with tips, and suggestions and notices about all the work you're doing and how important culture is.
Catherine Mattice:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Thank you.
Bill Eddy:
Could you define workplace bullying for us and what you see as the cause of it? Then I'm going to ask if you think it can be eliminated, but first, what is it, and why do you think we have it?
Catherine Mattice:
The easy answer is that workplace bullying is exactly harassment. So if you read the technical definition of harassment, the answer is that it's severe and pervasive and a reasonable person would consider it intimidating, hostile, or abusive, and also that it feels like a condition of employment. I put that out there as the definition, because I often hear that people believe they're different. They're two different constructs, but in fact, I don't see that at all. They are the same behaviors. The only difference is who you aim them at, so if I aim them at a protected characteristic, that's harassment. If I bully or harass everyone I work with, then I'm well within my legal rights to do that. All that said, I do put bullying behaviors into three buckets, which can help define it. Workplace bullying consists of aggressive communication, humiliation, and manipulation.
I often see that all three of those buckets are present when we're using words like bullying or probably high-conflict individuals as you use them. If someone's a yeller every now and again, we're not calling them bullying. Just to go through those buckets, aggressive communication is just what it sounds like, nasty emails, yelling, getting in someone's personal space, the aggressive body language that creates some fear for people. The second bucket, humiliation, is doing things like pointing out mistakes in public sarcasm, poking fun at people, socially isolating them, leaving them to feel humiliated. The third bucket is manipulation, doing things like giving someone so much work they can't possibly complete it in the timeframe you've given them, or taking away tasks from them that are important to their job. Using performance evaluations is a way to say you're a poor performer, but I haven't been coaching you, so how would you know better? So those are the three buckets of workplace bullying. Again, I often see all three of those in existence when people are really using these words around bullying.
In terms of the cause, I've been reading academic research on the topic of workplace bullying from around the world for a long time, and there is no clear agreement in the research on what causes it, but I can tell you my own experience from coaching individuals who engage in this behavior. What I've learned is they are über, über, über focused on competence. They want to be seen as über competent. While we certainly all want to be seen as competent, they are hyper focused on it. Couple that with having low social and emotional intelligence so that when yell at someone or freak out or engage in bullying behavior, they're not understanding the real impact of that behavior, so those are the two pieces. I also have noticed this pattern, you'll not find this anywhere in the research, I have noticed a pattern in coaching these individuals that they're fighters.
They have been fighting for something their whole life, and so it's a learned behavior. Just to give you an example or a couple of examples. I coached an individual who was trying to get into the NFL from college football. He was fighting for that. I coached a woman who was from China, came here with no English, no money, and now she's the quality assurance director for a pharmaceutical company. I coached a guy who would always say "I'm from the South Side of Chicago, he always would say that, so they're fighters. You put all those three things together and it is a recipe for the bullying. I'm just going to add one other thing to my very long answer. The organization has allowed it, that's what causes it.
Megan Hunter:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Bill Eddy:
That organizational tolerance or culture.
Catherine Mattice:
Yes.
Bill Eddy:
Well, it's very interesting because we often see, we think, a lot of individuals, people with high-conflict personalities and they generally have this win-lose approach to life-
Catherine Mattice:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Bill Eddy:
... which sounds like what you're describing is they're fighting and they see fights where they aren't there, and they see themselves as other people's victims, when in fact they victimize that person. It's fascinating that you say that, and yet I think the words you've used give hope for helping people change and that you can train or retrain some of that. So that leads to the last question I have is, do you think workplace bullying can eliminated?
Catherine Mattice:
I do under certain circumstances, so as any HR representative will attest, if you just say, "Could you be nicer and stop acting that way?" That's not going to solve it. It does require that the organization make it very clear that, "We're not going to tolerate this behavior anymore," so that is something that has to be in place. In fact, when I coach I won't take a coaching client unless there is a consequence in place, and that's because the organization's allowed this behavior for three or five years or 10 years, and so it's a way for the organization to say, "Look, we're drawing a line in this sand. It just can't be this way anymore." Then I have seen a lot of success with the people that I've coached, not always.
Sometimes I can't help them and I'll be very upfront with the employer who's hired me that I'm just not hearing the things that I need to hear to help me believe in their ability to change. So yes, they can, with the organization help in putting a little bit of pressure. I'll just say too, part of the coaching is to do 360 interviews and then I essentially, present all of that data to the individual to say, "HR is not just asking you to be nice, this is how you're perceived for real. This is the fact." I've found the individuals who take that in early on and are willing to own that, and they're saying things like, "Oh, my gosh, I didn't know this is what I was doing, or the impact I was having," they'll change. The ones that fight me on that feedback, I can't help them.
Megan Hunter:
It's those who may have a high-conflict personality that are those who probably aren't changing. We find that they don't take that feedback, regardless of what area it's in; in the workplace, and divorce, parent education, it's that high-conflict person who will say, "That's not me. I would not learn anything from coaching. I have not learned anything from coaching," and they just don't have that insight and they don't realize they have such an impact on others. That's something I wanted to explore with you too, is what do you hear from those within the organization who are impacted by a bully?
Catherine Mattice:
It's very damaging. The research is very clear that it's damaging. If you're at the receiving end of that behavior, you're confused and lonely and lost and you're developing anxiety and depression. In fact, there is lots of research that has found that you develop symptoms of PTSD if you're at the receiving end of bullying, so we hear a lot of that when we're doing those interviews. Then the cool part about coaching is, and we re-interview all of those individuals three or four months later, and that's the fun part, because then we hear things like, "I don't know what you did, but my life is so much better now that person is not engaging in that behavior anymore," so that's the part that feels good. I'm curious to ask you both, you use phrases like high-conflict personality and yes, certainly we could say people who bully are high-conflict personalities, but would you say that if you're bullying, you're also for sure a high-conflict personality or is there a difference?
Bill Eddy:
I've really been thinking a lot about this and I think it's essentially the same thing, because the definition we have of high-conflict personality that we most often use is they're preoccupied with blaming others, a lot of all-or-nothing thinking, frequent unmanaged emotions, like you describe where they'll start yelling at somebody, things like that, maybe even throwing things, and far as extreme behaviors, they do things 90% of people would never do. when I think about workplace bullies, many of them that come to our attention, they have this pattern of behavior. I was just consulting with somebody Friday afternoon in another state and they're describing this person and it just totally fits.
I think in our thinking, though, there's a range of how difficult people are, and as we talk on this podcast also about personality disorders, that there's an overlap of personality disorders, which are characterized by a pattern that doesn't change, although not all of them are high conflict and the high-conflict behavior. If they don't have a personality disorder, there's a better chance that they may be able to have some insight, some change. we never assume that someone's impossible to work with until we've tried, and I think we're similar to you. You describe some people just aren't open to self- reflection. The ones that are probably aren't high-conflict personalities, but have some high-conflict traits, so there's a lot of room here, but I think we're talking mostly about the same characteristics.
Catherine Mattice:
That makes sense. Thank you. I was curious about that. So thanks for [inaudible 00:18:17]
Bill Eddy:
Yeah. I was curious about your perspective of this. If we're seeing some of the same thing, I think that's helpful to understand, because then coaching, teaching skills, developing new behaviors seems to be worth a try with most workplace bullies, although some you're just not going to reach.
Catherine Mattice:
Right, and that's my experience. In fact, I had a coaching meeting with one of my clients last week and she was saying, "I'm going to make sure that I tell my boss that she was hearing me say, 'I didn't think this was valuable. I didn't want to do it.' But now that I've been coaching with you, it is valuable, and I'm so glad that I get to work with you. Thanks for being on my side." We got off that phone call and I'm like, "Oh, she's going to do a 180, for sure versus someone else that I'm coaching right now. He's so not bought into his feedback, not even a little bit of it. I've been telling the organization I know it's probably not going to work, so we'll see what happens with him. Stay tuned.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah.
Megan Hunter:
Well, that's what we see with parent education a lot is, I remember looking at the data years ago for mandatory parent education classes and divorce and child matters that go through the courts. It was about 80% would consistently say that they learned something and had some insight, like they shouldn't call their ex-
Catherine Mattice:
A bad word-
Megan Hunter:
... bad names, right, in front of the kids and things like that and they, "Oh, I'm glad I took the class. I didn't want to take the two hours to do it, but I'm glad I did." Then you'd have that maybe 20% roughly who would say, "This class was stupid. The teacher was horrible. I didn't learn a thing. They're ridiculous," and it just follows, and you know that what you're doing with everyone else, isn't going to work with this population.
Catherine Mattice:
I have a funny story.
Bill Eddy:
Oh, yes.
Megan Hunter:
Please, go ahead.
Catherine Mattice:
As you do, I'm sure as well, do lots of speaking engagements to build up awareness. I spoke at a chapter meeting full of HR people, and I was going through the evaluations after, and one evaluation says, 'This was so good. I'm so glad we brought her in. She was great," just all amazing. Then I keep going through and I get to another one that says, "This is the worst chapter meeting we've ever had. Who brought her in?" I'm thinking, "I bet he's bullying and she's not." Oh, by the way, the one that said I was really great, she said her bullying boss was in the room.
Megan Hunter:
Shocking.
Catherine Mattice:
There's a relationship there.
Bill Eddy:
You found his feedback.
Catherine Mattice:
Yes. Yes. Exactly.
Bill Eddy:
It's so amazing. I remember early on in this business that that's what I remembered, was that I was incompetent, unethical, should never teach again and getting one out of 70 evaluations like that, it's like, "How can I think about the other 69 rather than this one?" What I came to the conclusion was if it's one or two, then it's the outliers. I'm not the outlier, they're the outliers.
Catherine Mattice:
Exactly. Yeah. He didn't bother me at all. I just thought, "Oh, there's that bullying boss. It's all fine."
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. It's interesting you bring that up, because I've had something that happened similarly, but it was with a whole group. Boy, talk about feeling like a failure when you get a group response that, "This was terrible," after having the other 69 that are favorable. There's always a little bit of a mix, but usually, these topics, I'm sure you're in very much a similar position, Catherine. This is really interesting to people because it's so impactful on people's lives every day they're at work. Usually, the information's pretty good and we all strive to do a pretty good job with it. Like Bill said, when you figure out that they're the outlier and it's not about me, this is about a whole group and I can always improve. I can always do things a little bit better, but that feeling of feeling like a failure, it was almost like a group bullying experience in a way. Maybe that's a little extreme, but I find it fascinating.
Catherine Mattice:
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Bill Eddy:
Little simple things we find so helpful is telling people, "When someone treats you in that extreme all or nothing way, it's not about you, because it's not constructive." Constructive feedback says, "Here's a specific thing you might try doing differently." But when just someone says, "You're terrible, this was the worst," it's all that hyperbole language, then that's when it isn't about you. That takes a shift in thinking, but it's such a relief. My next question is, what do you do if someone really does need to be terminated from the organization? What would be a couple of key principles? I know many people that listen to the podcast are in small organizations, and so they don't have necessarily a human resource department or a lot of other people to go to. Are there a couple od key principles to consider?
Catherine Mattice:
I think there's one key principle, which is that bullying behavior and performance problems, you solve them the same. We tend to treat performance as if behavior is unrelated. So if somebody's showing up late to work or missing quotas or deadlines, that type of thing, we as managers and leaders know we're supposed to address that. We generally start off with coaching and then we work our way through discipline up to termination if that's how it goes and the behavior doesn't change. I still haven't figured out why we don't treat behavior the same way, and that's something I see in organizations all the time.
Why are we not addressing that? The moment someone starts engaging in poor behavior, just like if they're showing up late too often, you're going to coach them, talk to them about that behavior, give them some resources, talk with them about what needs to change, set expectations. Just like if they're showing up later missing quotas, you're going to walk them through the disciplinary process up to, and including termination. That's the answer. Behavior and performance are the same. In fact, performance is behavior, so I don't know why we treat them so different.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. If you look at three-and-a-half hours a week per employee spent on conflict, you're losing a lot of hours there, and especially right now with it's really hard to find employees, so you want to keep who you have and you don't want them going somewhere else. If 89%, nearly 90% of them are saying they're experiencing conflict at work, it behooves organizations, whether larger or small to really pay attention and to educate and to have good policies and a good culture and pay attention to both performance and to behaviors and what people are doing, right?
Catherine Mattice:
Yeah. Just thinking about right now what's going on, the great resignation, or the great reshuffle, whatever you want to call it, the research is really showing that people are leaving. This happening because of toxic work environments and culture. I believe it was Pew Research Institute said that the top three reasons people leave are pay and not feeling valued, and then the third was feeling just straight disrespected, and so they left. Boston Consulting Group is another one, the research I was reading recently too, that found the same thing. They found the number one reason people left was the toxic culture, so we have to address that. I'm sick of employers just saying, "Well, it's the great reshuffle. Everybody's dealing with it." Okay, but why are they leaving? Why are they reshuffling out of your organization?
Bill Eddy:
Right.
Megan Hunter:
Right. What's happening? You know what comes to mind is the song, We Ain't Going to Take It. The great reshuffle is we ain't going to take it no more, right?
Bill Eddy:
Yep.
Megan Hunter:
They're looking for a more positive environment and a place where they can, I guess, feel safer-
Catherine Mattice:
Yeah.
Megan Hunter:
... and more fulfilled.
Catherine Mattice:
Yeah. We got to treat behavior and performance the same. That's the key.
Bill Eddy:
That's a really good point that we need to give feedback as it goes, when it's all, and that's how you do it with competence, but not with social behavior, so that's a very good point.
Catherine Mattice:
Thank you. I'll add too, all of the research is pretty clear. All of the models on workplace bullying and how it unfolds over time, they don't start off with bullying, and then it escalates; they start off with things like incivility, some uncivil incident happens, and then nobody says, or does anything about it, so there's that little green light of permission. Over time, the behavior gets more frequent and more aggressive and eventually, it escalates to bullying and then there's bullying for three or five years, and then the employer's calling you and I. Let's address it early. It's way easier.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. I think there's a relationship between walking on eggshells around the bully from the beginning, when there's some civil behavior that's happening, and we just then start walking on eggshells around someone who eventually starts the bullying behavior, because we were afraid to do something about it. We think it's not our place. We don't know what to do. Maybe there is not an HR department. There's no one to go to, or maybe no one will listen, or no one's seeing what the real truth is what's really happening. I think if we started the structure, I'm a big, big fan of structure, as Bill of course is, and I'm sure you are as well. Having everyone understanding the policies, knowing the policies and having consequences when policies are violated from the beginning would be such a game changer.
Catherine Mattice:
Yep, for sure. For sure.
Megan Hunter:
We've been having some organizations become BIFF certified, which is, I think you're probably familiar with BIFF. Bill's work all around written communication with high-conflict people, or just even within any email communication if you keep it brief, informative, friendly, and firm, then you really calm a workplace. We have entire organizations who are taking this training from us, just not in a sense of how to address a high-conflict person, but just how to have a really calm and respectful workplace communication protocol, and it brings down the stress. It brings down the anxieties because it's done in a polite, respectful and structured manner.
Catherine Mattice:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I love the BIFF model and I use it often in my own work, as well as telling others about it. It's a great model. I'm glad you've put that out there in the world.
Megan Hunter:
What would you say is the most gratifying part of your work in this space?
Catherine Mattice:
A couple of things. Like I said earlier when we coach and then, and I say, we, because I have a team who helps with that whole process, when we're coaching and we do that 360 feedback initially, and then we do it three or four months later, and we hear all sorts of changes and people saying, "Thank you." That's really gratifying and makes it all worth it that we were able to change lots of people's lives, not just the one person engaging in that behavior. Then Civility Partners also does whole workforce culture. We'll go into organizations where there's some version of a toxic work environment happening and the organization's wanting to address it, so we do workforce surveys.
Then we take that data and we work with what we call an action team, which is made up of all different levels, different people, it's a diverse group, and we work with that team and we facilitate a series of brainstorming sessions to ultimately, develop a strategic plan for change. Then we help the organization implement that plan where they need our help. Then, of course, we rerun the survey a year later, 18 months later, or two years later and that's also, really gratifying to go through that data and see 60% of people would not recommend you as a great place to work, and now it's only 10% who would not recommend you as a great place to work and things. So some of those case studies are on our website along with the coaching, some case studies there too, but those lines and the graphs are magical art.
Bill Eddy:
That's excellent. That's excellent. I did think of another question that I hadn't thought of before, but I'm curious your thoughts on this, and that is, whether we should have workplace bullying laws. We do some work in Australia where they do have workplace bullying laws, and I was looking recently at two cases, one in the U.S., one in Australia. The one in Australia had, had been considered a violation of the law and the fine, there's like $600,000 penalty for that. Then I read a similar case only it was more extreme in the U.S. and it was dismissed because there's no law against, like you said, the broad bullying, if it's not personal harassment but it's on a broader scale, that's legal. Do you have thoughts whether that would be helpful or not? I know this is a controversial area and no state in the U.S. has this at this point.
Catherine Mattice:
Correct, except for Puerto Rico, the territory, not a state, but a territory, they do have a law against workplace bullying. They're the first in the United States to have something like that, so kudos to them. Yes, I do think we should have a law. As I said, harassment and bullying are the same behaviors. If you look at that definition of severe, pervasive, a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive, and then, or the harassment as, or someone feels like it's a condition of working there. I haven't sorted this all out in my own mind, in some ways, I wonder if it makes sense to open up the harassment laws to create a wide broader category so that protected is anybody. That's one version perhaps, but this coalition that I helped found, The National Workplace Bullying Coalition, one of my co-founders is Dr. Jerry Carbo.
He's an attorney as well as a professor at Shippensburg University. He has written something called the Dignity At Work Act, or DAWA, as we call it, so definitely check that out, the Dignity at Work Act. That law is just what it sounds like. It's focused on creating a requirement for employers to create a place where people can get dignity, which is how Europe is. So Europe has anti-harassment and bullying laws as well, but they also have this piece of law that's the positive side, that employers are required to create a psychologically safe work environment, essentially. We don't have anything like that, so that's another version of possibly how we go about putting some laws in place, that we require employers to create an environment where people feel like they're thriving.
Bill Eddy:
Excellent. It's really good to know.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. It led me to think about allegations and accusations of bullying/harassment. We're living in an era where safety is thought of a lot more often than when I was growing up, or in my early days of my career. While I think there's absolutely a need for employers to create a safe work environment, I'm hearing so many accusations of, "I don't feel safe around this person. I don't feel safe when you say this." Are you seeing an increase in this banding this about when it's something that's maybe not quite so serious as bullying or incivility or harassment, but it's more just a personal, maybe a trending thing. I don't know. What do you think about that?
Catherine Mattice:
Yeah. Let's talk about that phrase, "psychologically safe work environment." That has been something that you and I, we've been aware of that phrase for a long time. It became popular in the main stream with Google releasing maybe five or six years ago, a report where they had researched their own teams to figure out which teams were the most efficient and why. They discovered the number one thing that efficient and effective teams had in common was the psychologically safe team environment. So psychologically safe means that I feel comfortable to be myself and ask questions without fear of repercussions and reprimand. I know our need for psychological safety has always been there, but Google bringing that forward, people took that on, and then with all of the DEI work that's so popular these days, that's gained more traction through that avenue where people, we just have to feel free to be our whole selves.
That's one thing, couple, all of that with COVID, that all of a sudden we were seeing the inside of people's homes and their dogs and their children, and they're leaving early because they have to go and pick our kids up and, "Hey, I'm going to work after they get to bed, but I can't help it. I got to be there at 3:00, daycare's closed," all of that. We went through this struggle that I hope the silver lining here is that we're allowed to be more vulnerable at work than we were before. And so we're still fighting this battle of at home you're one version and at work, you're some other version of yourself even you see that phrase, "work-life balance." It even has a line between it to really highlight that there is a line between work and life.
I would argue that even before COVID work and life are integrated. If you're at a dinner on a Friday night with your friends, you're telling them about things that happened at work. The accomplishments we have at work are a big part of our own self-concept and self-esteem, so it's all meshed together. Let's be the same person all of the time, which means that work does have to create a psychologically safe place where we can be ourselves all of the time. I think a lot of times we get focused on the one person, like the high-conflict individual or the person engaging in bullying that they're the problem, let's address them. But again, they're doing that in the context of your organization, so there's a reason they feel comfortable to act that way, and recognizing the damage that it causes.
So, yes, I do think there's been an uptick in bad behavior because people are more stressed because we're isolated, we're burned out. There's just all of those risk factors that research says creates the opportunity for bad behavior or facilitates it, all of that's happening. I have a Google alert on abusive conduct and sometimes, I get emails from Google that searches for that phrase have gone up 113% since last week, or 300% since last week. It's not every week, but just that one email is a good indicator that we're frustrated, but we need to have a lot more grace for each other.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. I think that's absolutely true. I can recall someone I was working with who made some allegations, or filed with HR, a complaint of workplace harassment and bullying against another employee. I researched the entire complaint and it was really a non-complaint. It just did not have merit, but it created so much stress within the workplace, Just because there was now this investigation around it and everyone knew it. I think we have to have workplace laws and policies and all of that, but we have to be careful to not overuse or abuse them as well.
Catherine Mattice:
Agreed. I'm sure you've heard of the Healthy Workplace Act, that I feel like it's died down. I don't know what's going on with that. I haven't seen as much on that lately, but if you watch some of the old conversations about it with legislatures, they're saying things like, "Well, we can't dictate people will be civil at work. We're all going to have a bad day and things like that," and it is just so missing the point. You're right. We can't dictate people having a bad day, or we can though, require that in general, we treat each other respectfully and that if there is disrespect or bullying or her harassment, that people should feel psychologically safe to bring it up. That's what we're trying to dictate with the law, whether it's that law or the DAWA, it's not about micromanaging people's civility. That's not what we're trying to accomplish.
Megan Hunter:
And there it is, mic drop [crosstalk 00:40:54]. That was excellent.
Bill Eddy:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Megan Hunter:
I love it. Yes. So Catherine, this has been fantastic and it's just really, really lovely to talk with you and to know you've done so much research and all the stats of what's happening and really have your finger on the pulse of particularly incivility and building in the workplace. So thank you for sharing that with us today. We know that it's not going anywhere, so organizations really need to pay attention and adapt to address what's what's really happening, and to get their organizations in shape. For our listeners, you'll find a link to Catherine's book in the show notes. The book, again, is called Back Off! Your Kick-Ass Guide to Ending Bullying @ Work. We'll also put a link to her website and Catherine, why don't you go ahead and tell us what that is and where else we can find you?
Catherine Mattice:
Sure, civilitypartners.com. We are your partners in civility, so civilitypartners.com. I also have a ton of courses on the LinkedIn Learning Library, so check me out there. They often release them for free, so if you don't have a premium account, you can still watch some of them. They make them free every now and again, but I'm all over the internet. Google me, send me a carrier pigeon.
Megan Hunter:
Great. Great. Thank you so much.
Bill Eddy:
Love your positive attitude.
Catherine Mattice:
Thank you.
Megan Hunter:
For sure. For sure.
Catherine Mattice:
Thanks again for having me. I'm big fans of yours and appreciate all of the work that you're doing as well, so mutual respect here. I'm honored to be here with you, so thank you.
Megan Hunter:
Ah, thank you very much. It's been fantastic. Next week, we're going to switch gears away from the workplace and over into the world of distinguishing between true and false allegations as we examine the legal case between Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, Amber Herd who are, if you haven't heard it, they're suing each other for millions over allegations of domestic violence, substance abuse, lost income and reputational damage. So who's telling the truth? We will examine it. What's going on? How can a court or jury know who's telling the truth and who's lying? She says it's his fault. He says it's her fault. We'll examine it through the high-conflict lens.
If you have questions about high-conflict situations, please send them to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. That's so hard to say. If you're enjoying our podcast and learning something new, please leave us a rate and review. We'd be very grateful until next week, have a great one and keep striving toward peace. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes and transcripts at truestory.fm or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.