We've all had the experience of dealing with a challenging colleague. It's not only unpleasant, but it can also impact our well-being, performance, and our organizational culture. So, what can we do as individuals and leaders to create a culture of kindness, respect, and community at work? On this episode, Deloitte Chief Well-being Officer Jen Fisher talks with Christine Porath, professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and author of Mastering Community: The Surprising Ways Coming Together Moves Us from Surviving to Thriving, about the impact of negative workplace behaviors and how to overcome them through resilience, radical candor, community building, and more to create an environment where people thrive.
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Hi, I am Jen Fisher, host, bestselling author and influential speaker in the corporate wellbeing movement and the first-ever Chief Wellbeing Officer in the professional services industry. On this show, I sit down with inspiring individuals for wide-ranging conversations on all things wellbeing at work. Wellbeing is the future of work. This podcast will help you as an individual, but also support you in being part of the movement for change in your own organizations and communities. Wellbeing can be the outcome of work well designed. And we all have a role to play in this critical transformation!
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Jen Fisher: Hi WorkWell listeners. I'm really excited to share that my book, Work Better Together is officially out. Conversations with WorkWell guests and feedback from listeners like you inspired this book. It's all about how to create a more human-centered workplace. As we return to the office for many of us, this book can help you move forward into post-pandemic life with strategies and tools to strengthen your relationships and focus on your well-being. It's available now from your favorite book retailer.
We've all had the experience of dealing with a challenging colleague. It's not only unpleasant, but it can also impact our well-being, performance, and our organizational culture. Feeling respected and valued at work is foundational to creating a psychologically safe workplace where we can all thrive. So what can we do as individuals and leaders to create a culture of kindness, respect, and community at work?
This is the WorkWell podcast series. Hi, I'm Jen Fisher, chief well-being officer for Deloitte, and I'm so pleased to be here with you today to talk about all things well-being. I'm here with Christine Porath. She's a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. She's also the author of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace as well as Mastering Community: The Surprising Ways Coming Together Moves Us from Surviving to Thriving. Her work has been featured worldwide in over 1,500 television, radio, and print outlets. Christine, welcome to the show.
Christine Porath: Thanks for having me.
Jen Fisher: Absolutely. Tell us about yourself. I know your work focuses on civility, community in the workplace. How did you become passionate about these topics?
Christine Porath: Well, I think it really stemmed from my work experience and what I didn't see early on. Like you, I played college soccer, and I played college basketball and sports was an important part of my life, and I always had community built into that aspect. I think I just assumed that it would be part of the workplace as well and that people showed up and treated one another really well, and it was really an eye-opening experience when I took my first job out of college. I was working for the largest sports management and marketing firm, and it was just a subsidiary of theirs that was, like a toxic bubble basically. I just saw what the effects it had on people, how negatively it affected them within the workplace, but also how oftentimes they took it home with them as well. I just felt like we could and should do better, especially given how much time and energy we spend in our work lives. So, it just set me on a path to try to document and show as objectively as possible what are the costs of negative
workplace behaviors, especially things like disrespect and then what is the potential for creating workplaces and environments where people can really thrive.
Jen Fisher: So can you take us through how you define community? What does that look like in the workplace because I think a lot of people do struggle with “OK I played sports, or I was a member of this club or that club or they feel like there should be a difference in what community at work looks like versus what community perhaps outside of our work lives look like.
Christine Porath: Yeah, I think the idea of having concern for one another and caring about each other, ideally you have mutual goals and things like that too, but I think for me it's not like you have to be a family, but it helps if you can think of yourselves as a team supporting each other through the ups and downs is one practical way I think about it, and that's an important piece of also going with the idea of psychological safety and do I feel like I can be myself? Do I feel like I belong? Am I comfortable contributing my ideas? Do I feel safe to speak up about potential issues or those things resonate for me, but you want to feel good about the time that you spend with others. I think especially nowadays that people spend a lot of their lives in or around the workplace.
Jen Fisher: Yeah, in your earlier book, you talk a lot about civility and mastering civility. I'll be honest, that's not really a word that I feel is commonplace or used in the vernacular, in the workplace. So can you talk about what you mean by that and why civility? But also, what does incivility look like in the workplace?
Christine Porath: I think the best synonym for it is respect, and maybe we should have gone with that. I was working with a wonderful mentor, Christine Pearson, and she was doing some work on incivility, which you mentioned and so in that case it was defined as disrespect, rudeness, incentive behavior towards others and it encompasses a lot of different behaviors like feeling belittled, feeling degraded, not feeling a part of the team, not getting credit. It spans a wide variety, but I think having done some of the work on that and noticing what the costs were, then trying to figure out okay, how can we move the needle to be on neutral, and so just based on the word incivility, the positive word civility and it's certainly been used a lot in philosophy. Historically, it has a real place out there, but you're right, I don't think it's something that's commonly discussed in workplaces. I've been told that respect translates nicely across cultures, so for global firms like Deloitte, that's one that typically holds, and the people understand, and you tend to see it in a lot of different organizations values, mission statements and things like that, so I think using respect is a great synonym for what we mean by it.
Jen Fisher: Perhaps I'm a rose-colored glasses girl, but I mean I don't think that people intentionally try to be disrespectful in the workplace, so what causes incivility or disrespect? Why is it so hard for some people because I don't think it's hard for everybody, but what is challenging about being civil at work? Is it workload? Is it pressure? Is it stress? Is it a combination of things?
Christine Porath: I think you're right. It's a combination of things. We've asked people, why is it that you're rude and we all are from time to time, right?
Jen Fisher: We are. We’re human.
Christine Porath: We were curious about that, and the number one reason by far is stress and feeling overwhelmed so most of us can relate to that. The second reason is almost 50% of people rated that they were afraid that they would appear less leader like in the workplace by being civil, they wouldn't be
seen as effective and that surprised us quite a bit. About 25% point to negative role models, so people that maybe are flexing their muscles and really trying to showcase their power, and so it's a way of they look up and they emulate those behaviors and then another one that surprised us was about 25% pointed to a lack of training around it. At that time, we were just thinking don't you come into the workplace with this? So, we can see both sides, the idea of maybe understanding the norms better and things like that, but I think by far the number one reason is stress and feeling overwhelmed. I think one other thing that's really tied into this though is that it goes right along with what you said, which is people don't mean to be this way. That's actually been one of my greatest learnings it’s just that most of this stems from a lack of self-awareness. So, I think people just have blind spots. We don't know how we come off and for example, we can't evaluate our own tone while we're speaking. So, things like tone or perhaps non-verbal, or maybe it's interrupting, maybe it's cultural differences, just the way we were supposed to act wasn't quite what the other person would have expected, given that we come from different places, we've been colored by different…
Jen Fisher: Experiences.
Christine Porath: Yeah, industry norms even.
Jen Fisher: Well, I don’t think digital communication has helped, right?
Christine Porath: Makes it so much trickier, like without the non-verbal. Well, at least in a lot of cases, and certainly tone is another.
Jen Fisher: I fall prey to that, constantly on both sides, right? Reading into something that is said in an e-mail that's not actually, reading into the tone of an e-mail and we all do that. But then I'm also guilty on the other side, firing off an e-mail too quickly. That's fascinating though, that I hadn't ever really thought about you can't evaluate your own tone that is so… when you said it, I'm like oh my gosh! that's so true, but I've actually never thought about that.
Christine Porath: Yeah, well, I read about that in a book, and I thought, oh well, that's part of it, and I think the other thing is, people are hardwired very differently, meaning literally we sense things like much more sensitively than some people, so some people respond to stressors and threat and embarrassment. It's like up to 3,000 times differently, and that to me, I remember that Tom Hanks’ scene in the movie, A League of Their Own, where there's no crying in baseball thing? Just that idea that some people, just like in sports, we know that they may be more sensitive to certain coaches than others, so I think that that's something useful for leaders to pay attention to and really helps if you get to know employees a little bit better or an assistant coach or a different manager or leader gets to know someone. It’s not that you have to adapt to their style, but you can understand them better.
Jen Fisher: Do you think that the pandemic has helped in some ways? Because it has perhaps forced us all to be a little bit more authentic and vulnerable, therefore forcing us to step back and see not only our lives, but the lives of colleagues and the people that work with us and for us in a different way.
Christine Porath: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that it's provided a lot more emphasis on having empathy. We've probably all gone through things or known people close to us that have gone through some real challenges, and so I think it's helping us maybe move the needle to a more empathetic style of leadership, one that I know that you and others have been trying to really encourage and foster in different ways, so I think that that hopefully will be one wonderful thing to come out of this all.
Jen Fisher: Yeah, I know I keep calling it a silver lining, but I mean it's a struggle, right? because I'm not sure that there really is a silver lining to any of this that we've gone through.
Christine Porath: Yeah, it's certainly been a long road, that's for sure.
Jen Fisher: Yeah. One other question that you talk about in mastering civility is that well-being is the antidote to incivility, and since this is the WorkWell podcast, and we talk about all things well-being, can you help me explore that a little bit?
Christine Porath: Sure, I think the mindset is control what you can control. We can't change necessarily people that may mistreat us or are rude, especially if they have greater power than us in organizations, which is often the case we found, so I think it's really important that you make yourself as resilient as possible and a big part of that is really taking care of yourself, so it's all that you focus on with the well-being piece of it really, and so oftentimes I'll talk about it as energy management, but it's really like the physical, the mental, the recovery, sleep, all of that helps tremendously, and focusing on filling ourselves up with meaning and purpose outside of the workplace because by taking care of ourselves, not only physically but also feeling better mentally and spiritually because we're, let's say, enjoying hobbies outside the workplace or people outside the workplace. We actually bring a stronger, more resilient self into the workplace, so it's positively correlated, like you want to be thriving outside of work because that tends to lead to greater thriving at work, and so I just think that that's a big piece of it, but in the Community book, we dive into some of the research around that. The physical part of it I would say tied to civility or the antidote to incivility is our muscles are like a pharmacy that pump hope molecules into our system. So, if we're feeling down because someone, let's say, put us down, or belittled us. Well, a way to pick ourselves up is actually moving believe it or not, so that's something that we can do and sleep is also, I know you've spoken and written a lot about, but that's also really helpful in making us come into interactions more mindful, helping us deal with put downs let's say, helping us self-regulate our emotions in the moment and long term and even helping us show up differently so happy to talk more about that but in researching for this Community book, one of the streams of research that I stumbled upon was Dr. Matthew Walker's work around lack of sleep and how it's actually a social repellent. So, it's hurting community in the sense of a sleep deficit actually repels others. It's unconscious, but people pick up on that and they're less likely to like us and want to interact with us, and unfortunately, they also catch that and pass it forward in their network.
Jen Fisher: It's so fascinating. I mean because I think people don't necessarily know that it's because you have a sleep deficit. They just think that you're not a great person to hang out with.
Christine Porath: Right and I thought I...
Jen Fisher: I think you don't realize that. I mean, this is certainly resident in my own life and Dr. Matthew Walker's book changed my life and I talk about it often, but when you are chronically sleep deprived, you don't know it because you just think that that's the way that it is, like that's just the way that it is, that's just the way that you feel, that's the way you're supposed to feel, and I tell people all the time I never even realized how good it feels to actually get good sleep, we can have a whole discussion on it. It truly changes your life and my team if they end up listening to this episode, and I talk about this all too often, so they probably will roll their eyes, but they know when we spend time together in person, which has been a long time since we've had the opportunity to do that, when it gets to be about 8:30 or 9 o'clock, they start sending me to bed and I always tease them because I'm like, well you guys know
what it's like to work with a Jen who's not well rested. They giggle, but there's a lot of truth in that statement, right?
Christine Porath: Yeah. It's great for you to recognize and acknowledge, and I'm sure they appreciate it because we're setting a tone for them, and prioritizing that which we find is so important like it's not only that the leader encourages it, but when people see the leader role modeling it, you see like a really much greater multiplicative effect as far as others following those, what we would say, like sustainable work practices and lifestyles.
Jen Fisher: Yeah, so let's talk about your newer book and talk about community, and it's an interesting time to be talking about community, especially in the workplace, building community and building relationships in the workplace. So, let's start with what do you believe has been the cost of this decrease in real human interaction, not just in our lives, but certainly in the workplace and where are we going with that?
Christine Porath: Well, I think it definitely colors our mood. It's one of our core fundamental needs, arguably the strongest based on research and so when we lose that or lose a really rich part of that, I think we're working at a deficit, right? Our bucket is pretty empty in that department, and so I think that that means that we show up differently. I think for a lot of us it's led to greater depression if you will so our mental health is not nearly what it was, which typically means that we're not as engaged in anything, certainly our work, but also our relationships. Everything feels tougher and not nearly performing as well in the workplace, but I think also it affects our health in really negative ways, but also probably subtle ways that chip away at our well-being, and can result in really problematic health consequences, but it's hard to necessarily notice them in the moment and so maybe we don't make as many changes as we might be able to control because we think we can and should do better and so that makes it tough as well, I would say. Yeah, I think that there are tremendous costs and probably it's going to take us a long time to dig out of it completely because for most of us it's not like flipping a switch, right? It's developing…
Jen Fisher: The muscles we haven't used in a long time.
Christine Porath: Yeah, exactly, and leaders reminding people to go, it's OK to prioritize this stuff and what are the best practices for keeping up those routines even when you're not feeling well like I love the exercise example which is, when you don't feel like exercising, it's really great to just get started because you tend to feel better while you're doing it, but we know the research that shows we get a huge boost afterwards and we show up differently. There's even research with couples that work out together, or where one of them has worked out and relationships are better as a result of that. So I think if we can keep those things in mind and at least try to prioritize the taking care of me part, and as much as possible, encourage that and our teammates and the people that are colleagues and so forth, hoping for the best, if we can come out of this as fit as possible and motivated, again, you talked about silver linings, but I do think that potentially one positive thing is for a lot of people they've done it in their personal lives, but doing it in their work lives too where they're prioritizing community, they're finding ways to change their lives whether it's moving across country, whether it’s changing jobs, changing work habits, but I think that that potentially could be a bright spot.
Jen Fisher: Yeah, well. I'll get on that train. In your research, what are the benefits of developing flourishing communities, and I think we've talked about some of them, but I know you obviously go very deep into this in the book so can you talk more about that?
Christine Porath: Yeah, the biggest spikes that we see in outcomes are ideas with engagement, so engagement shoots way up if people feel a sense of community. People are much more likely to want to stay with their organization if they feel a sense of community. Health and well-being increases as well and then performance also, like if you're more engaged and more motivated to be a part of that, then of course performance usually follows. So, I think that those are some of the outcomes that we found associated with people having a sense of community.
Jen Fisher: As a leader, what are some tips like what are some best practices each individual person can do that will help create a sense of community not just for themselves but for others in the workplace?
Christine Porath: Yeah, I think a really practical step, especially right now, is just showing support for people, so it could be checking in quickly, like not pressuring them that they have to attend another zoom meeting or something like that, but just like what can I do to better support you or how are you doing kind of thing, and I think keeping a pulse on how your, let's say teammate is feeling and what they might need or what they might need to do differently as a result of some of the challenges that they may be dealing with family care or health care issues with those around them, those things is really important, like feeling that someone has your back and that cares about you I think goes a long way. I've heard of leaders that are starting meetings by asking about like what's one practice or tip that you've started that has helped your well-being through the pandemic, and so stealing best practices from each other around what's been helpful like what has been working given that most of us feel like there are plenty of things that aren't working very well, so that's something I think that people being vulnerable and creating it through that, a psychologically safe space for them to share their challenges, their fears, their desires, things like that goes a long way. So really trying to unite people, especially because there have been plenty of negative things going on in society for a long time now where I think that a lot of people feel isolated, fragmented, based on certain views and so forth. So, if you can unite people, I think that that goes a long way also, but those are a couple of what I hope are practical things.
Jen Fisher: Yeah definitely, and I think in the book you also talk about components of cultures, whether it be an organization or a team that help build community and it's interesting because many of them are the same ones that we talk about when it comes to building cultures around well-being, but things like information sharing and autonomy, obviously we covered respectful environments, radical candor, which is one of my favorite and you talked a little bit about psychological safety, but can you dive into some of those and tell us how those affect community building if you have them or negatively impact ability to build community and belonging if those are missing in a culture.
Christine Porath: Yeah sure, so with uniting people, I think you're creating a community to unlock people's potential so that's what I was trying to get at with psychological safety is just making people feel comfortable sharing information with each other and you can start that by stepping up to the plate yourself. So, I think that that's one way to unlock not only people, but also the potential of a community or an organization. I think unleashing or this idea of autonomy is really the idea of empowering people and making it about allowing them to own something, so it's not about how do I want them to do it, but how do I help them achieve their goals. I think for a leader that might be playing what's called the backbone role, which is how do you support people, how do you connect maybe people with others so
that they can get the job done, maybe you're providing them data and/or an ear to know how it's going, but that's the idea of, making people feel like they matter I would say is a part of that, and empowering to do things their way, or at least in your Deloitte examples, I know that you guys often provide discretion around when the work is done or teammates covering for each other certain times so that also plays into that idea of autonomy and discretion and things like that and makes the community better off for it because again what tends to happen then is we learn from best practices so the example in the book is with 100,000 homes, which was when they housed over 100,000 people and they were all different cities across the country involved in this, but you can imagine that some cities would do things a little differently, and then they could share that information such that we we'd all be better off because of that. I think respect, we've touched on as you mentioned, but there's a real breakdown of community if that's not there, and we talked about some of the costs of incivility and performance certainly, a lot of good people, talent leaving the community if there is disrespect present, even if they're not the target of it. I think civility or respect creates stronger, higher performing communities. One important aspect of respect is that the disrespect is like a virus, and it spreads really quickly, but the good news that we found in research is civility is contagious too, so our small actions matter and every one of us community members matters that way. Radical candor, I love that too, so I'm glad to talk about that one, but and I think that's really tied to respect. Like to me, respect plants the seeds for that to happen. I love Kim Scott, the way she describes it. You care personally and so for me respect is like a part of that or could be and then it allows you to challenge directly and you see the best results, so I think both positive and negative feedback can foster community when people feel like safe and it's a respected and trusting environment, it can lead to real performance gains because, as Kim Scott and others talk about it, by sharing let's say negative feedback constructively, we're able to raise each other's game, and going back to the self-awareness point around disrespect, like if I can share the little thing that's rubbing me the wrong way with you in a respectful way and in a way that you know I care about you and your progression and all of that well, chances are you care about people, you have concern for people, so you're probably going to listen. I'm going to feel good because you're listening to me and then you're probably going to make some changes and improve in ways that help you and help our team and community that way and so I think that also just tends to establish an open discourse where people are more willing to share information so it's like perpetuates the cycle that you want around that, providing meaning and purpose, I think is just helpful to inciting motivation and reminding people of the good that they are or can be doing, and so that's really helpful. It's creating meaning for your community and its members. We know that that pays from a lot of research. It also, I think providing meaning helps put a dent in isolation and loneliness and hopefully again get people to do more of that. Then the last thing that I mentioned as a lever is boosting well-being which you specialize in.
Jen Fisher: That’s my favorite topic.
Christine Porath: Yeah, you specialize in so, but I think part of what I'm trying to highlight is how to create a caring culture and what I think is a challenge you hit on already, which is like a virtual or hybrid environment makes it tougher, but when you create opportunities for people to connect in deeper, richer ways that foster community, the members, the organizations, the stakeholders, all benefit, and I think the way that I see that, at least in our research, is well-being drives engagement and loyalty which leads to retention and better service and which often leads to revenue and better performance for the organization.
Jen Fisher: Yeah, and I think that's so powerful, and I think what so many organizations are starting to realize is that well-being can be positively or negatively impacted by so many things in an organization or in a person’s workday, right? It's not just about offering meditation programs or great vacation time or things. I mean all of those things are incredibly important as part of the foundation, but recognizing the experience that somebody has in their day-to-day work day can negatively or positively impact their well-being, and I think it's heartening to see well-being being talked about in this way and a light being shone on it in this way, so one of the things I wanted to loop back on, sorry I just went down a little rabbit hole there, but radical candor, because I think this is an area that is so important, and perhaps doesn't get enough attention in the workplace and, Kim Scott is great, it also reminds me of so much of Brene Brown's work around being a daring leader and “clear is kind” right? How do we develop, I mean it's really a skill set? I remember the first leader that I worked for that gave me difficult feedback. It was hard to hear, but she delivered it in a way that I walked out feeling empowered and energized to make a change as opposed to feeling completely deflated and useless that I was failing at my job, and so and I think this is a skill set that we're potentially not doing a great job of helping people develop and helping leaders develop. So how do we go about developing that skill set?
Christine Porath: Well, I know Kelly Leonard and Kim Scott have really advocated for improv so like literally practicing it, just like we talked about working out like you have to flex that muscle. What I appreciate about that is that most people really struggle giving negative feedback. So, like I'm not doing it until you make me, basically, so if that's the case then I really need to learn to get myself through that. Practicing it seems like a good way to go about it. The way that I've found to help, whether it's MBAs or executives do that thing, has been literally in teams, providing feedback for one another. I try to rally them before and with the Brene Brown-type messaging and about being vulnerable, about being courageous, about feedback as a gift, and on and on, and I think maybe I'm hoping that helps, but ultimately, and I also coach them up a little bit using others work on how to receive feedback because that too is a skill. I think oftentimes the part that we don't get learning on, so those work together, but then I encourage these teams to whether it's on an index card or something else to share three things about each individual, like strengths that you're going to highlight for them and then on the other side of the card, what are three things that they could work on to be more effective or influential. I didn't know how this was going to go. I was skeptical and I assumed that they would hate this and instead I have teams staying an hour after class, hanging out saying it's the best exercise that they've done, and I think the catch is it's like 360 feedback. It can vary a lot, so if people don't feel safe and if they don't really put themselves out there and share what the other person could be improving on, it's just not going to work, but I think to your point, the other aspect of it is teaching people that pointing out that you care is so important. So, I think there's a study on feedback which shows that by prefacing feedback with just 19 words, and there's something along the lines of, I care about you, and I think you can do better and that's why I'm giving you this feedback, it decreases the defensiveness around people, because they're reminded, “Oh yeah. One, she cares about me. Two, she sees and has high expectations and beliefs in me, and she's just trying to help me close the gap so I can get there.” Hopefully making people more mindful of that and then perhaps telling them how much radical candor matters, like what a difference it makes to people. It will help motivate them to work through the pain, delivering that negative feedback, but there are so many examples. I mean, I really appreciated conversations with Christa Quarles, who was CEO of OpenTable, who's now CEO of Coral, and Chris O'Neill, who is country leader for Google and then ran Evernote, them describing how they saw radical candor as the tool to help transform their culture, in doing so drive innovation and performance.
Jen Fisher: Yeah, I completely believe in that, but it's so underutilized in such a powerful tool and a powerful skill, right? But I think we have to learn to be. it is uncomfortable and I don't know, does it ever become comfortable? I guess it does if it becomes part of your culture, right? But if you're the outlier, it's probably always uncomfortable.
Christine Porath: Yeah, I think we can help. I mean harkening back to conversations with Krista, one thing that she pointed to, which I loved, which is in the book, is she said you have to give it to get it, is what she realized because she walked into an environment that she said was squarely in the ruinous empathy. I'm not going to tell you what you need to hear kind of thing. She recognized early on that I'm going to have to be vulnerable and model this for people and that helped move the needle a lot, and she highlighted to them, it's OK if we fail that they actually were going to learn faster and perhaps better from some failures, and so I think she also worked at reducing the fear of failure, which may have helped so that people just were hopefully a little bit more OK with negative feedback or that uncomfortableness of failing, so those were some things. The other thing that she did that I thought just sounded really helpful was she would pull people aside if she felt the need to give them some feedback and close the gap. So one of the stories she shared was of a super high potential female that she said really had the goods and she needed her to speak up in meetings, but that wasn't happening at all, so she just pulled her aside and said, like listen, we need your voice and you're valuable, I'm going to tee you up for this, but I need you to speak up, so there were times where she did that and encouraged her enough and set her up and behind the scenes was coaching her and also telling her how great she was, like that's why they wanted to hear from her and that helped a lot apparently, but that doesn't happen overnight, of course, but just like the transformation that you could make, person by person also struck me as something a leader or teammate could do, and MBAs have shared similar stories around that.
Jen Fisher: If we all just picked one or two people to do that with, we could change the world, not just our companies.
Christine Porath: Exactly.
Jen Fisher: I love it. I have one more question for you that I failed to ask before, but it's OK to fail, we've been talking about that. What are some of the most common missteps that you see in community building? Are there things that we should be watching out for that are commonplace, or perhaps like acceptable norms in the workplace that are actually keeping us from good community building or things that we should avoid?
Christine Porath: Well, one thing that comes to mind is meetings and maybe that's just front of mind, but the idea that we have to march through all of these steps together lockstep, so I guess I'm getting a bureaucracy a little bit, but some of the research around meetings was interesting to me. I'm not a person that enjoys meetings, so maybe that was just helpful to know that there are some issues around them, but that was one I think I would not prescribe having a lot of rules for communities. I think you want people to join them because they feel a bond with people because of that, so that strikes me as helpful. I think it's really important getting back to the idea of psychological safety, of creating places where people feel safe. The idea of trust is so important, so making sure that you guard that as best as possible, so for example, I have a brother that runs a healthcare community that has online forums. From the start, they invested a lot of resources around moderators, just to make sure that there were safe places so that people didn't feel picked on basically, or because that's the last thing that they wanted, and they felt like they needed to really work hard to make sure that people felt OK being as we
talked about earlier, vulnerable and sharing, so I don't know, those are some things to come to mind, and then I guess the other thing that we touched on around well-being is the importance of leaders being role models in community, and so I know from your work and some of the videos that I've seen and talked to Dan Helfrich about this, but the idea that you have leaders that are living this stuff matters, more than you might think.
Jen Fisher: It really does.
Christine Porath: Do you have ways that, I mean I've seen some of the videos, but that you try to make sure that people feel that more deeply or notice?
Jen Fisher: I think one of the things that we do at Deloitte, and you and I may have talked about this previously, is this whole idea of spoken team behaviors and norms, and so as a team, but importantly as a leader, facilitating regular conversations about what we want our behaviors and norms to look like so that everybody is, we talked about “clear is kind” right? Everybody is clear as to what the expectations are of them. Everybody is aware of what other people's needs are throughout the day, throughout the work week, things as simple as a team deciding what our standard working hours are going to be, when can we generally expect to all be online and all be in a position where we're available to collaborate within reasonable parameters because people have work to do also, but outside of that, how do we communicate with each other? Because if there is something that comes up, communicating via e-mail is not a great way to communicate because then everybody feels like they have to be online all the time, right? So how are we going to communicate in the event of an emergency or something that is a true priority. I think I just wrote something recently about; we need to stop saying that everything is a priority and if you follow Greg McKeown at all, he says that really, truly there can't be 10 priorities, right? The word priority itself means that there's just one. So, stop marking things as urgent when they're not really urgent. Stop calling things a priority when they're not really, truly a priority, and so setting that groundwork as a team and as the leader, making sure that you're the one that is leading that behavior, right? You can't say that you'll do it and doing something. I mean, I've experienced that in my own life as a leader is telling my team they don't need to check e-mail when they're on vacation, but then I check e-mail when I'm on vacation right? I have all the stories around why I should check e-mail on vacation, but what I'm doing and what I'm saying doesn't add up and that is hugely detrimental. Fortunately for me, I have a team that isn't afraid to tell me when I'm taking a misstep, which is great because it keeps me in line too.
Christine Porath: That is great. Well, that shows that like the radical candor is there.
Jen Fisher: Absolutely yeah.
Christine Porath: Safe space.
Jen Fisher: Look just because I have a title that has well-being in it, doesn't mean I have it all perfect. I definitely don't.
Christine Porath: That's how I talk about civility and community. I'm learning about it. I'm not the master of it.
Jen Fisher: Exactly. Well, Christine, thank you so much. I feel like we could keep going, but there is so much in here that all of us can learn and go do, and I just appreciate a lot of the tactics and how actionable so many of your responses were. So, thank you very much for your time.
Christine Porath: Thank you for having me.
Jen Fisher: Absolutely.
I'm so grateful Christine could be with us today to talk about community and civility at work. Thank you to our producers, Revit 360, and our listeners. You can find the WorkWell podcast series on deloitte.com or you can visit various podcatchers using the keyword WorkWell, all one word, to hear more, and if you like the show, don't forget to subscribe so you get all of our future episodes. If you have a topic, you'd like to hear on the WorkWell podcast series, or maybe a story you would like to share, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. My profile is under the name Jen Fisher or on Twitter @jenfish23. We're always open to your recommendations and feedback, and of course if you like what you hear, please share, post, and like this podcast. Thank you and be well.
The information, opinions, and recommendations expressed by guests on this Deloitte podcast series are for general information and should not be considered as specific advice or services.