With People Inc.

Is it better to be loved than feared? Supervision: Performance Management and Psychological Safety

by | Feb 7, 2022 | Bullying, Equity, Exclude, Harassment, Human Resources, Mental Health Moment, OH&S, Safety, Welcoming, Workplace Respect

We have the distinct pleasure of meeting supervisors and managers of every stripe through our work, including those with differing strengths, aptitudes, and experience levels.

Common aspects of the role that many supervisors wrestle with are how to encourage employees to honour the required professional boundaries of the relationship and how to influence employees to afford deference to their position of authority over their team.

Many supervisors go down the path of creating a defensive shell around themselves. This often takes the form of a persona.

That being the goal, there is a conscious decision to create a persona that projects dominance, strength, and, deliberately or not, fear.

In almost every case, such contrived personas are void of a willingness to be authentic and vulnerable with one’s team (something necessary to develop trust).

Under this scheme, assertiveness may be interpreted as aggression. Put more plainly, some supervisors, in playing their part, behave aggressively instead of assertively, whether they intend to or not and whether they even know it.

What happens under these circumstances? When crafting this persona, the supervisor chooses whether it is better to be feared than loved.

Today we revisit this classic question, albeit within the context of performance management, “is it better to be feared than loved.”

Perhaps the most prolifically cited author for the phrase, “it is better to be feared than loved,” is Machiavelli, as cited in “the Prince.”

Before going too far into that specific quote and chapter, we note the Prince, even after all these years, has some measure of controversy among academics. Many questions whether that writing is the most accurate account of Machiavelli’s perspectives.

When the Medici family came into power in Florence, Machiavelli lost his position in civil service. Some believe the Prince was, in a sense, a job application in which he was courting members of the Medici family to gain his position back within the bureaucracy. For Machiavelli’s more audacious statements found in the Prince, I tend to take them with a grain of salt – as I believe he was speaking to a more specific audience.

At the beginning of that chapter, Machiavelli starts by saying that leaders must be “considered merciful and not cruel,” and what is often omitted in the quoted statement is the portion that follows after the comma, which changes the meaning of the sentence significantly. The more fulsome quote is, “It is better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.”,“…if you cannot be both…”.

No, Machiavelli did not give blank-cheque permission to even the most pragmatic supervisors and managers to be cruel towards and feared by their team.

 In surveys, employers describe some of the traits most desired in their employees. We do not intend for this list is to be exhaustive. We have reduced it to those behaviours reliant on a certain level of cognitive functioning.

Employers want employees to know their strengths, employees who can think independently, solve problems, be innovative, be proactive, and be willing to learn new things.

The stereotypical Machiavellian approach to supervision presumably leads through fear and creates an atmosphere lacking psychological safety.

Employees put into a workplace that lacks psychological safety are more prone to experience a fight or flight reaction and may enter a state of hyper-vigilance, all of which can impair higher-level cognitive functioning.

Instinctively, they are more on the lookout for sabre tooth tigers than finding solutions to overcome the organization’s challenges. This would suggest that having supervisors and managers lead through fear is contrary to the organization’s interests in many situations. That is why it is better to be loved than feared – it is in your own self-interest, and in the organization’s interest.

We at Workforce Delivery throw out a challenge. Test our own leadership style. Consider whether there are improvements that we could make and decide what and how we might transition towards those improvements. Remember, it is better to be loved than feared by your team. Thank you for your time, and have a safe and enriching day.

Workplace Mental Health: Mental Health Moments and the #20PercentChallenge

by | Feb 7, 2022 | Equity, Exclude, Human Resources, Mental Health Moment, OH&S, Safety, Welcoming, Workplace Respect

Many organizations start off meetings with four or more people with a safety moment. Well over ninety percent of these focus on physical safety. Way too many focus on driving conditions (little quips about the commute on the way to work that morning), or the weather. Some safety moment cultures at work have lost their lustre and have turned into morning ice-breaker/socialization moments. If people haven’t tuned out of the conversation entirely, many tune out to the safety purpose of the topic or mindfulness called upon by the good and well-thought-out safety moment. Rarely, do people talk about psychological safety, health and wellness. For too long, our safety moments have avoided the topic of workplace mental health and mental wellness.

However, roughly 1 and 5 people in Canada will encounter a mental wellness or illness challenge in any given year. Imagine, having a risk factor present among the general workplace population at a frequency of twenty percent and not talking about it. Many safety professionals fail miserably in approaching behaviour-based and cultural transformations required to support psychological health and safety. That is because safety professionals are often process leaders, not thought leaders.

Work cultures lacking safety around mental health and awareness can negatively affect those coping with mental health and wellness challenges.

Corporate wellness programs serve otherwise healthy and well employees. Corporate wellness programs fail employees with mental health and wellness concerns and often isolate such employees further.

Telling a person who can barely get out of bed every morning to go for a jog or join a yoga class can further exacerbate someone who needs to start with mental health support.

We can do better by promoting and normalizing people accessing the resources they need through conversations about workplace mental health.

By age forty, 50% of the population will have had a mental health problem or illness. [ Fast Facts about Mental Illness – CMHA National]

Yet, we do not talk about mental health and wellness at work.

This avoidance to hold space and having these conversations must change.

 We need to combat the stigma and normalize the conversation. 

For this reason, we ask each of you to consider taking the #20percentchallenge.

Commit to 20 percent of safety moments per week on mental health and mental wellness topics.

Join the conversation at our Workplace Mental Health page for more resources.

Discuss.

#20percentchallenge

 

Healthcare Employers Tested to Protect Employees from Threats and Burnout

Healthcare Employers Tested to Protect Employees from Threats and Burnout

by | Feb 6, 2022 | Harassment, Human Resources, Labour Market Update, OH&S, Safety, Workplace Respect

Drastic Times Call for More Thoughtful Measures to Protect Employees from Burnout

Healthcare employers use systems to avoid employee burnout and protect employees from threats. Despite these systems, factors of late stress test the capacity of those protective measures. Hence, employers must adjust, take extra care, and increase resources. In so doing, they maintain support for employees during times of increased need. 
Protective measures include:
  • hazard assessment,
  • physical and policy-based violence and harassment risk management,
  • mental wellness supports, and
  • distribution of work and resourcing.
We recommend that employers combat employee burnout and install safeguards from employee exposure to threats jointly with unions, employees across work areas, and cross-discipline management leadership teams. Collaborative approaches will result in:
  • higher quality controls,
  • across-the-board buy-in, and
  • greater system integration.
Public policymakers and law enforcement must also step up to the plate. They must clearly and unreservedly condemn harassment and violence directed at healthcare heroes. Police must enforce and protect targeted employees and members of the public.

“A 2021 survey by advocacy group Doctors Manitoba found that 57 percent of physicians reported mistreatment from at least one patient in the previous month. Verbal abuse included racist and sexist attacks and being compared to a Nazi and accused of profiting from the pandemic. Other aggressive incidents included being spit on, vandalism, social media attacks, physical assault and death threats….The healthcare system belongs to us all. As a major cause of physician burnout, this crisis of incivility and abuse threatens the people who patients need to trust when their health is at stake. It affects anyone who is a patient, has ever been a patient or is hoping to become a patient of a family physician.”

#leadership #work #management #people #health #healthcare #doctors #wellness #riskmanagement #police #socialmedia

For information on how our firm can assist lead and facilitating risk assessment and risk mitigation, visit us at our labour relations and human resources firm’s homepage.
Find Your Sacred During Times of Tension and Conflict Communication

Find Your Sacred During Times of Tension and Conflict Communication

by | Nov 15, 2021 | Bullying, Collective Bargaining, Competition, Harassment, Human Resources, Labour Market Update, Negotiations, OH&S, Safety, Sexual Harassment, TRC 92 (ii), Workplace Respect

Conflict Communication

Find your sacred during times of conflict and tension: As I sit across the bargaining table from a Union counterpart, he slams his fists against the table, calls me names not worth repeating and has choice words for the employer I represent. It is worth mentioning; the employer I represent is reasonable and fair. Fortunately, this is not an everyday experience. Most of us negotiators can have these difficult conversations while respecting the party opposite and the process. Whether out of shock or good judgment, our team does not react.  I suggest a caucus “to gather our thoughts,” but it is to create space to calm things down.

During our caucus, the first order of business would be convincing our team that the outburst required no direct response.

Sure, there are times to respond with passion and vigour, but that wasn’t one of them.

I would remind our team that perceived process wins and “I sure showed them moments” in front of committees did not amount to a win on the actual negotiation scorecard.

While strolling down the hallway to our caucus room, I inhaled deeply, muttered, “It’s not about me,” under my breath and reflected on what holds us together in these moments.

What keeps us from responding in kind, escalating the situation and causing conlfict communication breakdown and impasse?

For me, and it works regardless of whether others reciprocate the sentiment, I hold dear and sacred the negotiating table, the negotiation process, the parties involved, and the agreement reached. Holding on to this meaningfulness keeps me grounded and helps me not lose perspective during tension and hostility, independent of what happens during the exchange.

This is hardly a unique approach, but how did this approach become ingrained within me?

I was often troubled and confused about my place and direction in life throughout my teens and early twenties, exacerbated by several family calamities. Fortunately, at the time, I found a healthy distraction in the sport of wrestling. It meant a lot to me to become competent at the sport. I prepared obsessively and competed often.

What could Wrestling, or other Competitive Sports have to do with Conflict Communication?

Wrestling was somewhat nerve-racking for many in the sport, even the well-adjusted. A match is a one-on-one competition. Defeats were punctuated and often taken as personal failures unless they were in matches close on points. Due to my maladjustments, I was driven more by fear of losing than the joy of participation and chance of success, seemingly to a greater extent than most.

I worried too much and made the mistake of placing too much of my identity and self-worth on the line.

At tournaments, our team members would wear our wrestling singlets underneath our sweats and t-shirts during warm-ups. We would drop our shoulder straps and let them hang down outside our sweats during warm-ups before the match. In so doing, we showcased our slightly rebellious nature and style (if there was such a thing among us) while it identified us as wrestlers when walking the gym floor.

There was a rule; however, you never stepped onto the mat with your straps down when arriving for your match. Doing so would be a sign of disrespect for the sport, to your opponent, and the match itself.

I enjoyed the rule. It was one of those things we came to know and made us feel like we were in on a secret code of sorts. My self-centred fear would block access to the more fulsome meaning behind the rule at the time. After accumulating much greyer hair and distance from the sport, a deeper appreciation would surface years later.

A wrestling match is an intense situation that reveals our humanness, whether virtues or vices, courage or fear, or a mix of all above. It is a test or moment of truth, if you will, on whether you trained hard enough, had the physical and mental fitness, ate properly, and had the talent to succeed. It was a test of character, courage and integrity.

In the middle of all this intensity and human frailties and strengths, the mat was sacred.

We worked out on the mat, warmed up, stretched, cooled down, meditated, and even disinfected and cleaned the mat. We cared for and honoured the mat. The mat was the truthteller during the competition amidst a collision of human fortitude, weakness, and tension. Having the reverence to adopt rules that made the mat sacred was enough to remove us, ever so slightly from our self-centred fear,  to engage in the match on an honourable footing grounded in virtue with our fears muted.

For those transformations to happen, the rule/ritual needs to be in place, and we need to be present to the moment enough to honour the ritual and find meaning in it.

During our caucus, I see energy return to the faces of our team. They understand that the over-the-top outburst we witnessed did nothing to change our bargaining position. They understand that a non-reaction can, in fact, be more potent than a reaction in conflict communication. We walk back down the hall to the negotiation room. I take a few deep breaths during our stroll.

We enter the room and move to our seats. My eyes scan the surface of the table, with binders and papers strewn about, people leaning in, leaning back, arms open, arms crossed, elbows on the table elbows off the table, some eye contact, some eyes down, some eyes averting direct view, some nods and some shrugs. I exhale as my hands touch the surface before me and feel its texture. I gauge the table’s strength while seated. I notice the soles of my feet against the floor and feel my connection to the ground supporting me. I press my shoes to the floor, twist ever so slightly and feel the resulting stored energy. This is a precious moment. The negotiation table, process, and the agreement that we will eventually achieve; bind us to the truth and integrity that connect us. I remind myself that it is not about me. It is not about one person’s behaviour. With self-centred fear set aside, we get down to honouring the business at hand again. In this state, we are prepared to engage in conflict communication skillfully. 

Whatever we do, find the meaning, find the sacred, and learn to trust it.

That is one example of how some of us hold it together during conflict communication, tension, escalation, hostility and challenge.

Please visit our homepage for more information about our labour relations and human resources firm with offices in Edmonton, Alberta and Prince George and Victoria, British Columbia.

Respectfully submitted,

Sam Kemble

Chief Operating Officer

With People Inc.

 

Lateral Violence: When the Oppressed become the Oppressors

Lateral Violence: When the Oppressed become the Oppressors

by | Jul 17, 2021 | Colonialism, Equity, Exclude, Harassment, Human Resources, Indigenous, Mental Health Moment, OH&S, Safety, TRC 92 (ii), Welcoming, Workplace Respect

When the oppressed become the oppressors.

Lateral violence is a form of bullying engaged in by those oppressed and lacking power. 

In a state of anger, fear and at times panic, feeling unable to confront the system that dominates them, they lash out and attack peers and those closest to them, often those also oppressed. 

It is a function of power or lack thereof, and individuals (often targets themselves), without recourse, lash out at whom they can. Unfortunately, the systemic lack of recourse contributes to the release of energy in an unproductive, at times harmful form. It involves a release of energy built up from toxic or traumatic experiences.

Lateral violence is a sad and retraumatizing phenomenon.

Root causes of this tendency include:

  1. colonization,
  2. oppression,
  3. intergenerational trauma,
  4. powerlessness and
  5. the ongoing experience of racism and discrimination.

Resolving this requires confronting it by outing it, naming the damage it causes and acknowledging whom it damages.

Create space for discussions on the topic in general. Engage peers to gain understanding and commit to eradicating the behaviour from the workplace.

Bullying & lateral violence – Creative Spirits

Strategies: 

  1. Out it.
  2. Confront It.
  3. Discuss its Causes.

Gain Freedom from It.

Discuss.

Take the #20percentchallenge

To learn more about our labour relations, human resources and recruitment firm, visit our homepage.

Job Readiness: Born Mainly from Positions of Privilege, What is it Now?

by | Apr 26, 2021 | Colonialism, Competition, Equity, Human Resources, Indigenous, Labour Market Update, Recruitment, TRC 92 (ii), Welcoming, Workplace Respect

Suppose we Googled the phrase “job-ready” and looked back to the content date stamped at just about 2000. The phrase was not as pervasive as it is today and is often referred to as:

  • machines and equipment that were job-ready[1] for the projects that needed them,
  • welfare recipients[2] and convicts who were job-ready[3], and
  • projects themselves being job-ready (i.e. ready for people; what we now refer to as “shovel-ready”).

Hence, the phrase was about:

  • the absence of, or remediation of, socioeconomic barriers to achieving a job,
  • about the scheduling function of projects concerning material and equipment, or
  • scopes of work developed enough to receive the workforce required to execute the work.

Between 2001-2005, industry stakeholders began to use the phrase more widely; it was about candidates for employment having all the required training tickets for safety-sensitive positions, usually in the industrial construction and maintenance sector.

In Alberta, this was born mainly from a place of privilege. During such time, building trade union members performed most heavy industrial construction and maintenance work in the Wood Buffalo and the Industrial Heartland regions. Each hiring hall had a multi-employer-funded training trust fund, indirectly paid for by major industrial clients through cost-plus funding arrangements with their contracted service providers. Despite this, the practice was that those members dispatched would spend the first 3-4 days on-site, on paid time, in safety training. Often the project and employer would be retraining members who would not disclose that they already had the certification in question.

Who wants to be out in minus thirty turning wrenches when they could be on paid time, sitting in a lovely warm classroom, drinking coffee, learning about fall arrest for the twentieth time?

Safety professionals certainly did not lose sleep over this waste; it meant more business for them. In the heavy industrial construction and maintenance sector, there is no business like the safety business.

Then, the ones paying the bill had enough.

Purchasers of significant industrial capital projects sent their auditors in, who began to ask questions.

If we have to pay to train everyone anyways, why are we also paying millions of dollars each year into training trust funds?

There was no good answer to this uncomfortable question, and it became an awkward conversation at the bargaining table.

The repetitive training and upload of the training responsibility to the industry’s best clients became, to some extent, a prevailing practice.

Employers needed to address the issue with the bargaining representatives of the members who took such liberties for granted for a long time. The Ironworkers, Carpenters and Labourers stepped up. They recognized they were in the business of supplying qualified, skilled tradespeople and construction professionals to the industry and ended the practice.

They readily agreed to dispatch their members “job-ready,” meaning they were pre-trained, supported by their training trust fund, and ready to go to work.

It took multiple rounds of bargaining for other unions to remove this waste; they would argue that their members were entitled to their entitlements. They instead invested in bricks and mortar of large and lavish training centres with the owner-funded unspent training dues.

If you treat your clients this poorly, any business person knows they will not be clients for long. This situation was no different.

Building trade unions have since lost market share; they no longer perform most of the work available in the Wood Buffalo and Industrial Heartland regions.

Now most workers participating in the industry are no longer dispatched through hiring halls and are no longer supported by funded training trust funds.

When this shift happened, site owners and employers maintained the practice of insisting workers be job-ready.

As a result, the industry downloaded the responsibility for training certifications onto the backs of working construction and maintenance tradespeople.

Now we have no problem with established journeypeople maintaining their safety certifications as part of what it means to be committed to their profession. We feel less comfortable about this within the context of newcomers and apprentices.

We also recognize that this practice, which came from a place of privilege, can have a disproportionate impact on members of groups of individuals who have not traditionally participated in the industry, such as women and BIPOC candidates.

Just one example, members of Indigenous communities living in remote communities do not have equal access to training resources as other candidates.

Workforce Delivery Inc constantly self-scrutinizes our processes, actively seeking to identify structural, systemic and institutional barriers and then apply measures and, at times, a positive bias to eradicate those barriers.

This is what it is like, to recruit right?

If you want to understand more about Workforce Delivery Inc’s recruitment services, contact us at [email protected] or visit us on our recruitment services page.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Sam Kemble

Chief Operating Officer, With People Inc.

[1] RIOT-The Scheduling Problem (berkeley.edu)

[2] How Are Families That Left Welfare Doing? (urban.org); Welfare-to-Work Block Grants: Are They Working? (brookings.edu)

[3] Recruiting and employing offenders (employabilityinscotland.com)