Bullying in the workplace and being an upstander (with Jessica Hickman)

Welcome to the People and Culture podcast with me, James Judge. Today I'm talking to Jessica Hickman, who wrote a book published last year called the Upstander Leader. And she also runs a consulting business called Bullyology. As you might be able to tell from the name it, she's focused on bullying, specifically helping leaders and organisations stop bullying in the workplace. So it's similar to what I do in that we're both interested in helping build capacity in individuals and creating better workplaces. She's got an interesting personal story as to what got her working in this field that she talks about extensively in her book. But let's talk to her directly and find out more. So, Jess, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to discuss this very important topic.

I read the book last week and noted that you go into some detail as to how you got interested in, let's call it bullying prevention. Is that a fair summary of what you're focused on?

Yes, one. One part of what I'm focused on is bullying, bullying prevention awareness. But ultimately it's helping, you know, business leaders and individuals within organizations really understand what makes or breaks workplace culture. And bullying and harassment are one part of, as you know, the cultural umbrella. And I kind of fell into this work. Like many people who work in the bullying or harassment space, many of us have got personal stories of injustice or suffering within an organization. And ultimately that's why I decided to dedicate my life's work to this mission.

Yeah, it's an interesting story of how you really turned a set of negative experiences into something that I view, and I'm sure you do, as overwhelmingly positive. Tell us a little bit about what drove you to set up your business.

Great. So thanks for asking this question. So look, I suffered extensive bullying and harassment for a three year and a half year period. I came over from the UK and was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work in the oil and gas industry, working in a people and culture role in the human resource HR department. And I was, you know, able to develop culture programs there. I worked in the construction, fly in, fly out industry. So a lot of complexities with mental health, isolation, loneliness. Majority of the workforce were living on camps. So why this is important is because I was able to develop culture programs, but also I became quite successful as a female in a male dominated industry. So I was winning awards for my work, nominated for Northern Territory Young Achiever. So, you know, all very exciting stuff from a girl from Wales that had landed and been dropped in the Top end of Australia. But look, six months in, I had a new manager, you know, who was head of human resources. So the person directly responsible for the people within our business. But unfortunately he was a toxic perpetrator of injustice. He was a bully. And unfortunately I was his preferred choice. Young, confident, empathetic female doing great things in the industry. And ultimately he bullied and harassed me for a three and a half year period. The more successful I became, the more awards I won or the more traction my programs had, the more he harassed and bullied me. And he had a very toxic, outdated, let's say, I wouldn't say leadership style because it was very individualized, but it was very much authority, my way or the highway leadership approach and very outdated and old school. So he didn't believe in nurturing the mental health and the culture of the business. It was pretty much his mindse set. A mentality was, you either like it or I'll fire you. And if anyone was suffering mental health or issues, his answer was that a risk to the business, let's get rid of them. So it was really interesting that six months prior to him joining the organization, we developed these beautiful culture programs that were having traction and success and then ultimately he was trying to tear them apart. That's really how I fell into this work because I unfortunately ended up collapsing in work in June 2017 where the bullying had got on, gone ongoing for three and a half years. And, you know, my mental, physical and psychological health had been impacted and I was still showing up to work, trying to do a good job filling everyone else's cup, but not stopping to realize the impacts of a toxic culture on myself. And it was only when I was hospitalized with burnout, stress and chronic fatigue that I realized how detrimental toxic cultures are and toxic leaders. But ultimately, you know, what's important about this story is I reported it 32 times to corporate and many leaders turned a blind eye, put it on the too hard basket, or, you know, told me, toughen up, Jess. Is the industry so little miss stubborn, which is me, you know, try to ignore it, try to sustain the role I loved, but ultimately it caught up with me and hospitalized me.

In the book you talk about the flow on effects of a toxic culture. Now, as a mediator, I sometimes get called in when there is conflict in a workplace and there's some kind of trigger. It could be a grievance. A workers compensation case is another example. Sometimes I can help, but that sort of intervention doesn't necessarily address the broader issue that an organization or a team might have with problematic workplace culture. Now, you describe in the book the bystander effect as being a key contributor to toxic cultures. And you've obviously experienced this yourself with those 32. Was it instances of complaints that you made? And you outline a process to move people from bystanders to upstanders. So tell us about the bystander effect and what being an upstander means.

Yeah, absolutely. And just to touch on everything you've described there is very reactive. And James, I can I try to be in the proactive space. And typically people will, you know, organization leaders will come to myself or you and say, help, help, help. You know, Rome is on fire. We've got major issues. Compensation claims. You know, my reputation has been damaged is often an indicator. But ultimately, you know, I try to be in the proactive space, which is education and awareness and prevention. But what I realized through my work was, unfortunately, we're always going to have bullies, people who harass others and perpetrators of injustice, whether it's racism, discrimination. But I realized the actual enemy to success for an organization culture was something called the bystander effect. And I would reflect on my experience and scan the room as I was being publicly berated, having names called at me, and even on one occasion, having a folder thrown at me and called incompetent in open plan office. And I would scan the room and really not understand how good people could stand by and allow this to happen. But I realized over time there was something called the bystander effect present. And the easiest way I can describe the bystander effect to you is it's widely researched. It was actually established by two psychologists in the 1960s and really came to play because there was a young woman called Kitty Genovese who was brutally attacked in New York City. And when the police investigated this incident, it was found there was over 32 witnesses that, you know, closed the windows, heard it, turned up their TV and diffused responsibility. None of them called the police. And they realized, wow, through this research, as human beings, our natural instinct is when things get challenging or tough is to diffuse responsibility. And I found that so interesting, particularly when we look at toxic cultures, bullying and harassment in organizational contexts. You know, another school, community sports group, social media. And I realized, wow, the people were not bad people. It was just they didn't have the tools, skills, training, capability to know how to challenge this behavior, Particularly when it was a person within power, you know, that was in charge ultimately of hiring and firing people. So I realized the bystander effect was ultimately Present where good people tolerated the bad behavior, turned a blind eye, you know, even pretended they didn't hear the comments or looked away because one, they were probably fearful of losing their jobs. And ultimately on occasions, a few people had, you know, said, enough is enough, or are you okay, Jess? And ultimately the highest paid person in the room, which was, you know, the project manager or the CEO, they defused responsibility. So that set the culture of what was accepted. And I often say to leaders, the standard you walk by is the standard you accept. And that comes with bystander fatigue. Also, where people may have, you know, typically it was called whistleblowers, and I hate that I call them upstanders. But ultimately, if you raise concerns time and time, time and time again and they just get ignored over time, that just becomes bystander fatigue. And we slip into the bystander zones or zone ultimately because we're fearful, we don't have the training or competency to know what to do, or we know that nothing will ever change and we could potentially lose our jobs. So understanding this and researching this across industries I work with, I realized, wow, we need proactive education, not just in what bullying and harassment is, which is often a tick and flick exercise, but how to recognize bystander behaviors in organizations and ultimately create what I call upstander cultures, where people are given the tools, skills and competency to not only call out bad behavior, but actually at a ground level, lead cultural change. And that's really why I focus a lot of my work now in building what I call the upstander movement and upstander leaders, where people are, you know, encouraged and empowered to be leaders, aside from the job title to lead cultural change in workplace and community.

Yeah, you've kind of answered my next question here, which is great that, you know, good leadership is also a key component in creating positive workplace cultures, as bad behaviors that are tolerated or ignored are in essence being approved. And not all of this bystanding or doing nothing is necessarily ill intentioned. It could be about the person's confidence, it could be about their capacity. I know, especially talking to leaders around, you know, having difficult conversations around family violence in the workplace or mental health. Sometimes people don't have the conversation because they just don't want to make it worse.

Yeah, and also on that, that's a really good point. And you know, there's no one size fits fits for what a bystander is. And you know, I've got nine archetypes, but ultimately I realized that people are categorized into various zones of being A bystander. And to answer this question, I found that a lot of people were unconscious. So unconscious of their words, actions, or how their beliefs impacted individuals in the workplace. And by this I mean, you know, touching on the point of leadership, we are often promoted through an organization hierarchy because we're particularly good at our job, our trade of our, you know, our subject matter expertise, and then we're given the job or title of manager or leader, and then often not given the skills to know how to lead, manage complex human beings, and, you know, even the rise of the pandemic. A lot of leaders I work with struggles, you know, expected to suddenly manage remote teams, complex needs, mental health, isolation, depression. And often I've seen good managers become bullies by default because it was learned behavior or, you know, the standard that was set in the organization, from the CEO to whoever, and ultimately micromanage and cause uncertainty, angst, and anxiety within team members.

In terms of creating and maintaining a positive workplace culture, psychological safety is now recognized as being critical. I did a deep dive on that topic in episode three, so I don't want to spend too much time on that now. But I would encourage any listeners that want to hear more about psychological safety from some experts. Episode three is worth listening to. In the book you mention, you talk about these different zones people fall into, and you also discuss upstandard traits that can be developed. And please feel free to unpack that. Would you say that what you're trying to do when you move or you help organizations get to a speak up culture is actually a contributor to creating a climate of psychological safety?

Yes, I think that, you know, underpinned everything from, you know, the upstanding movement and what I do, which is, you know, my new book is called the Upstander Leader, how to Develop a Speak up Culture. And ultimately, psychological safety is underpinned in all of the concepts and principles that I talk about. I love Amy Edmondson's work. Her psychological safety zones. She actually inspired me. Her thought leadership, a model around psychological safety zones, actually inspired me. When I was looking at standard bystander zones and as I was having conversations with people, I could actually see in my mind, wow, were they falling into what I call the unconscious zone, the uncomfortable zone, the avoidance zone, which ultimately are the three bystander zones, or are they striving or currently in what I call the upstander zone? And to answer your question about, you know, can upstander traits be developed? Absolutely. And in my book and course, I unpack, you know, some of the critical skill sets or archetypes of upstanders. And often courage is, you know, one of the bedrocks to success because as we know, challenging the status quo, calling out bad behaviors is uncomfortable and takes courage and candor to be able to do so. But ultimately, you know, one of the things I talk about in the book is emotional intelligence and how the world of work has changed and how movements and eras have really impacted the importance of focusing on topics that are quite uncomfortable right now. I also talk about empathy, ethics and equality and how all of these things are, you know, the bedrock to success and psychological safety. Absolutely. If people don't feel safe to speak up, are they going to challenge behaviors and language and beliefs if they feel that their manager or leader isn't open and receptive to receiving two way feedback or them coming and asking for help, raising the alarm if there's sexual harassment or racism or, you know, even bullying or whatever happening. So to answer your question, they go hand in hand. And that's why I also run workshops on psychological safety, as, you know, an intro workshop helping people understand the importance of a speak up culture. And then I bridge that with my upstander leader workshop, which then looks at the fundamentals and the capability building to help people move from bystander to upstander and ultimately create change.

And you outline five critical steps that people can take in your book to develop themselves as upstander leaders. And one that really resonated with me was the importance of continuous learning. I've found that leaders who don't consciously pay attention to changing trends or emerging issues fall behind and risk alienating employees and probably hindering their own career progression. So this idea you talk about too, moving from a fix to a growth mindset, how easy do you think that is for some leaders?

Oh, it's really, really challenging. Everything I talk about in the book, it doesn't come easy. And that's why leaders often put most of these topics on the too hard basket. And it's funny, when I've been rolling out the upstander movement and all of my concepts and thought leadership models courses have been tried and tested for nearly a three year period. And the reason why I focused on learning, James, is because when I would share with business leaders about some of the big picture trends impacting employee happiness and health, I started to talk about the Me Too movement to Black Lives Matter. And even, you know, at the time was the Brittany Higgins, the March for justice, and a lot of other movements that are impacting people, which fundamentally underpinned by discrimination or injustice. You would be surprised about how many leaders actually had no idea what the movements were about or adhered to them at all. And I just found that bizarre. Okay. So I realized, wow, if we aren't learning about topics that are impacting our employees and one of them could be domestic violence, as an example, I'm in regional New South Wales and the stats are really horrific. So again, it's blind spot syndrome, which ultimately causes us to be bystanders. And again, back to the beginning of our conversation. It's not necessarily because people are bad or bad leaders. It's because you don't know what you don't know. And I also time and time again would hear the same language, why fix what's not broken? Or this is the way we've always done it around here, which ultimately, to answer your question, is the fixed mindset. So is it easy and does it come natural to people to be in that growth zone all the time? Absolutely not. And it can be unrealistic for leaders that are constantly on that hamster wheel of doing more, achieving more, you know, being more. But we do need to stop, pause and reflect and look at the big picture trends and what is impacting our staff, our employees, and our teams. Because ultimately, when we focus attention on, on those topics or those injustices or sufferings, that helps us become better leaders and ultimately is the key to a thriving workplace culture.

I also liked your discussion here around replacing authority with influence.

Yes.

What are your views here and why.

So my views here really are, you know, if we look at traditional leadership models over time and tenure, it was the old school, authoritarian rules, my way or the highway, one dimensional leadership, I'm the boss, you know, you're the employee, you do what I say. But over time, and this comes with a generational shift as well, which is a whole nother conversation. And what employees want from their leaders now is rather than, you know, to be dictated to, but rather to actually be mentored and coached and, you know, look at the influence around them and how they can be better people and leaders. So some of the best organizations I've worked with are where the leaders focus on influencing change. And that can be walking the talk or walking the walk rather than, you know, lip service, doing, you know, bring your dog to work or cookies on are you okay day, which is all great, but ultimately that doesn't create sustainable workplace cultures. Day in, day out, 365 days a year, it's the leaders that show up, be authentic, have empathy, and ultimately, you know, express some of Their emotions and challenges also that really influence workplace culture rather than the, the closed door mentality that was, you know, typically generationally. And the reason why I have strong views over this is because of conversations with my grandparents. So as a young entrepreneur changing jobs and industries, you know, my grandma once said to me, you know, a job's for life. Just get a job and you stay in that organization. And I stay said to her, well, what happens if the boss is toxic or a bully or harasses you? And she said, well, that was just the way it was. You asked no questions and it was their way or the highway. And I said, well, yes, times have changed. And looking at our job scope and you know, job market, particularly in Australia, people are no longer happy just to stay within an organization, stay silent, be suppressed and you know, have that authority over them. They want to feel part of the team. And ultimately from all of my research into my book and course, I found that people just wanted to be seen, heard and valued. And they really appreciated leaders who demonstrate that or allow that to happen.

We won't probably have time to cover that off today and people need to read the book to find out, but you do spend a chapter or so just on different expectations from, from different generations. And Jess, that actually takes me nicely into the next question I wanted to ask you, which was you positioning love as one of the five leadership values, which I thought was particularly brave. Not that I disagree, not that I disagree, but I think people don't often use that word. I think people will sometimes talk about authenticity or integrity, integrity or maybe compassion being important in a leader. And these may be just different lenses through which to view the same thing.

Yes. And I think that, you know, thank you for saying I was brave. As you can imagine, James, I work in a lot of male dominated industries. So when I position love, you know, people go, what love? And their body tenses up.

I was going to ask how does that go down in the workshops?

Yeah, look, people are really receptive to it. And when I actually explain what I mean by love. And of course I'm not talking about romantic sense of love, you know, interpersonal relationships you have with your partner, your husband, your wife or whoever. I'm talking about love as in care, compassion, kindness, you know, empathy, respect. And I really started to think about this concept a lot after interviewing a gentleman called Andrew Tyndale, who I mentioned in this chapter of the book. He is a managing director of a large food chain supermarket. He spoke about heart centered leaders leadership and how, you know, employees are not just a number to him. If someone lost their life, which has happened due to, you know, circumstances of suicide, or gets injured at work, he feels that deep impact as if it was one of his family. Because as a leader, he cares and loves ultimately his employees, you know, like they were his family or children. I found this really interesting because I reflect on when I work with heart centered leaders who show love, care, compassion and kindness. And ultimately they are the best places I work. And even when times got challenging, you know, leaders who, you know, lead with the heart, be kind and inclusive, really impact individuals on their growth, on their productivity, and ultimately on the business success. So while love is a topic that makes a little bit, you know, people uncomfortable, I also talked about how it's basically, you know, the acronym of love, which is living our values every day. So thinking about the values that are important to us as individuals and as a business owner or leader or, you know, leaders within organizations and bringing those principles into your leadership practice. And I give the example of. Often someone will share an example with me where they got in trouble because of a comment that was passed off as banter, but ultimately it was probably sexism or racism or actually bullying. And I said, well, how would you feel if someone said that to someone you love? Your son, your daughter, your wife, your husband, your sister? Usually I get a very strong physical response, Well, I wouldn't do this or that or, you know, even people have said, well, I, you know, this. Bash them up. And I go, okay, so what makes you think about, you know, what makes you think that you can use those words and language and behavior in the workplace? Oh, well, it's just the banter. So when I talk about love, I talk about the importance of, you know, loving others as equal, love thy neighbor, but also in a leadership concept, you know, loving yourself enough to lean in and learn stuff, but also walk away from situations that are no longer filling your cup and not staying in toxic situations or standing by, being bystanders to situations that can actually ultimately damage others, including yourself.

Lastly, I was going to ask you what you had planned for 2023, but I already know you're going to have a baby, which is a pretty big thing to do for anyone in a year.

Yeah.

Anything else planned in the business sense? Is it going to be business as usual for you in your consulting and training operations?

Yeah, so I would love to say it was business as usual, but I probably won't be. I'm doing five weeks, so I'm just on the process of winding down a little Bit from face to face work, but ultimately I've got the book, an online course and many other things going on this year. So if people are listening and you know they're really interested in the upstander leader workshops, they're available in a online course format which has got 22 modules, downloadable worksheets. So it's basically the face to face experience but from your home or office. And again, I'm growing the business. I'm doing a lot of media stuff, sitting on a few boards. So I think that it's going to be a really interesting year, James, as I develop my leadership skills in new way. Becoming a first time mum while running very successful, growing business while, you know, promoted my book all around the world and being involved in a lot of book awards and promotions globally. So stay tuned. I don't know what's ahead but I'm very excited for the new journey.

You actually have an online it's the Upstander Academy. Is that one aspect of what you're doing and is that where people could tell us about how people can contact you? Your website?

People want to contact me directly or look at my programs? Go to jesshicman.com and there you'll find a link to my online course which is called Upstand Academy or just type in Upstand Academy or my name. If you're listening to this and you are struggling with a toxic organization or suffering with bullying yourself, whether you're an employee, business leader or even a parent that is really worried about your children or family member, head to bullyology.com and I'm sure Wolf James should be happy to put in the show notes, the links. The Bullyology website is a free resource center that I've developed with downloadable fact sheets from parents to people within organizations. And I've also got a few tools on there to help you record bullying or ultimately where to get help. I realized when I was suffering bullying I didn't know where to get help outside the organization. So I've created a global list of helplines for anyone around the world to get signpost and support to help you manage this toxic culture or if you're suffering bullying yourself.

Okay, I'll definitely put those links in the show notes and on my website. So Jess, thanks so much for joining me today. Good luck with having a baby and maybe we'll talk towards the end of the year.

Thank you so much James. And I'm open to anyone reaching out, you know, contacting me.

You've been listening to the People and Culture podcast with me James Judge. Feel free to share this episode with anyone you think might get some value from the conversation, and any reviews you leave. Wherever you subscribe or listen to your podcasts are also very welcome. I've got a company, James Judge and Associates, where, among other things, I run highly interactive seminars on how to have better conversations in the workplace, whether that's performance discussions, career conversations, or handling complex customer complaints. If you're interested in finding out more and want to reach out, send me an email or contact me on LinkedIn where you can find me pretty easily. This podcast was recorded on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal people, and I pay my respects to Elizabeth Nation, past and present.