Jessica Hickman on working in regional NSW, fighting bullying and creating 'upstanders'

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You're listening to HR Leader inspiring you to lead the workforce of tomorrow. Hello and welcome to the HR Leader. I'm Shandell. I'm the editor at HR Leader and I'm excited to be joined today by Jessica Hickman. Jessica is the founder and director of Bulliology and. And a workplace culture specialist. Welcome to the show, Jessica.

Thank you so much for having me today. Very excited to chat to you.

Really looking forward to our conversation today. I think we've got a lot to cover. I think the best place to start. We were having a chat the other day is about your work now, and I understand you're working in Orange, and so I thought it might be really good in light of a lot of conversations that are happening about move from the city to more of a country space. I've recently moved myself to what we call a late change. What's that been like? And what would you say to our listeners who are considering a move like that?

Yeah, so look, as people can tell by my accent, I'm actually from Wales and from the UK and I've been in Australia for 10 years, so I guess I'm kind of used to moving. But prior to 2020, I was settled in Coogee in Sydney, living by the beach, as my husband would say, in a box apartment, paying extortion at rent. We were rented and 2020 came around and like many people, we kind of had the opportunity at how we were living our life. And my husband got offered a job actually out in Orange, New South Wales. I had never been to Orange, but it was one of those gut instinct feelings that I thought, change is good, let's do it, let's take this opportunity right now. And I was doing a lot of my business workshops, consultancy, online. Obviously the pandemic was right. And, yeah, now we live on a beautiful farm on a, you know, a big property with gorgeous views and it's just a slower pace of life, but also busier with regards to work, which is really interesting because when someone says, move out to regional New South Wales and, you know, you're in a business like mine, running training and education programs, consultancy, of course, we can do it online. But, you know, I think I said to you last time, probably 70 to 80% of my workload at the moment is local and it is face to face with multiple industries, which is really interesting for anyone considering now moving out to a regional area. There's mining, construction councils, even large government organizations that are local to me, which is fantastic. I'm very Excited.

Sounds like a great opportunity. And I know we started to talk a little bit about the work that you've actually been able to do within that community. And you said they've been very welcoming, which I think is great. And what do you feel that you've brought, I guess, from the experience that you have to the community in terms of helping them with workplace culture and I guess stepping things up a little bit in terms of workplace culture?

Yeah, yeah. So look, my business is called Bullyology, so I specialize in anti bullying solutions and really focus on building thriving workplace cultures. And what was interesting in 2020 was a lot of my clients were saying, jess, we've got people struggling with burnout, fatigue, anxiety, overwhelm and all the complexities that with 2020 to 2021, and we're still feeling the residue, right. And I realized that, you know, people were struggling. And a lot of my work now is focusing on helping leaders be the best they can to lead workplace culture. So I realized pretty quickly that bullying harassment was just one pocket of an umbrella of workplace culture. And it was the opportunity to move regional and work with, you know, some councils, government organizations and private companies that allowed me to really, you know, extend my offering locally. And biggest things I found moving to regional New South Wales, and I do a lot of work across, you know, the states, regionally now is there seems to be kind of like old school mindsets and behaviors. I typically hear the language such as, well, this is the way we've always done it or why fix was not broken, which is really interesting. And a lot of people have been in industries from, you know, apprenticeships or, you know, starting off as a trainee and staying in a job for much longer than what you would see in the city as an example. So working with organizations where, you know, people have been leaders for 30, even 40 years, and looking at some of the big picture trends that are affecting leaders and workplace culture at the moment now, from Black Lives Matter movement to the MeToo movement to bullying and sexual harassment and all the things that are happening, unfortunately, without Parliament, you know, Canberra, Sydney, and reports and thinking, right, how can we be proactive about workplace culture, looking under the rug of what we've always done around here and really upskilling leaders on how to be change makers and ultimately how to be upstanders, which I focus on within my business?

It's really interesting, just pulling a point you mentioned there about being in regional New South Wales, finding that there are people who have been in one organization for a very long period of time. So it's that challenge of how do you bring fresh ideas in and challenge that status quo of well, this is how we've always done it. And yeah, imagine that. How do you, how do you win the trust when you go into a business like that and show them that culture change is going to help them.

Resilience and cutting through the bs, to put it, quite frankly. Look, one of my clients said to me recently, you know, you've got this skill that enrolls the naysayers, but also I realize pretty quick that, you know, sometimes the naysayers and the most difficult people in the workplace are because previously they've been shut down, not had their voice heard or ultimately, you know, they've been promised things that never came to fruition around culture and change, change resistance. So giving a voice to those people and enrolling them in the conversation. And I found that they have been the, you know, the biggest, what I call upstanders, upstand the leaders and change makers because they're so often so passionate about something and they're fearful of change and you know, that change of cultural agility I call it. And they create a barrier and once you can find out, you know, what is the reason why and what's underneath that layer of barrier that often that's where success lays.

I really like what you're saying there about the passion that they bring and that perhaps in the past they have actually tried to drive change and then being knocked back because that's a hard position to then come into and get them on board. Right. But it sounds to me like you're able to harness that passion and say to them, basically, let's give this another chance. We are actually here to make proper change this time.

Yeah. And look, as a facilitator of workshops and conversations, I think that, you know, using empathy and reading the room and even energy, you know, I've done or training around energy and reading rooms because a one size fits all, particularly in an organization in regional New South Wales or any organization now a blanket approach to culture is old school again. So being able to read the room and often, you know, I have frontline workers that have been, I don't know, filling potholes or in the road to, you know, managing gardens and parks, to doing construction work and coming in and, you know, doing role play activities and some of the other stuff like is just not comfortable. So learning to build rapport and deep relationships with my clients that, you know, last 12, 18, 2 years, 3 years, I'm able to actually create sustainable change rather than a one size come in, just do a workshop on a topic and leave and but to really unpack some of the topics that we discuss and go deeper. And that's why I'm spending a lot of my time working with proactive organizations that want to invest to create culture change and look at some of the emerging trends and what's happening in this decade of change and disruption and be future focused.

Sounds like really exciting work. And I'm sure that you're getting a really big variety of conversations that you're having with people as well about different challenges.

Absolutely. And you know, I've written my new book, the Upstander Leader for a Give a Plug. But really that was from the need of talking to people across business and industries and listening to some of the leadership stories and some of the things that people were struggling with and creating, you know, a methodology or self help toolkit for people to know how to develop a speak up culture and follow, you know, a roadmap ultimately to assess where they're currently at, which is really the first step into change culture, understanding your people and where your business and culture is currently at without assumptions being made.

And we're speaking with Jessica Hickman. And we'll be back on the other side of this break. And we're back with Jessica, workplace culture specialist. And we've been talking about her work in the community of Orange. And you started to talk there a little bit about speak up cultures. And what I want to really cover with you today as well was this idea of what bystanders are. So I think that, that obviously they feed into each other. Can you tell us a little bit more about these concepts and why it's so important to be aware of them?

I found time and time again that something called the bystander effect is ultimately the enemy to success with workplace culture. So for anyone listening, I encourage you to look at the bystander effect. Ultimately, it says that as human beings, when things get hard, challenging, or quite toxic and difficult, our natural instinct and desire is to diffuse responsibility. So there's a lot of research around this. And I realized, okay, so we've got people that are typically good people, leading organizations, being leaders, working in HR departments that ultimately, you know, diffuse responsibility when things get tricky. Or again, we're overwhelmed already with our constant workload adding on top of a pandemic and complex needs of human beings. So through understanding the bystander effect in my work, I couldn't simply accept this as the status quo. So I focused my work on switching the Pendulum on something, what I call the upstander effect, which really realizes that if we do dedicated training and capability of building with organizations and people, leaders to identify where they've got bystander cultures and switch the pendulum to build up standard cultures, focused education, awareness, developing our skills from, you know, empathy, ethics, equality to conscious listening, we can ultimately create that speak up culture.

I like what you said there in terms of making it about upstanders. So what does that look like?

So look through my work and my new book, I've developed some thought leadership around what an upstander culture looks like. And I've identified bystander versus upstander zones to help anyone, not just leaders of organizations. Pick up the book and go, right, okay, where are we currently at? How am I feeling at work? So that's the first step, awareness, and then is building capability around how to be an upstander. So I've developed my five steps to being an upstander in the book, which is to look at the environment, to listen consciously, to learn and unlearn, to lead change. And ultimately the last one is to love, which is really interesting considering it's a workplace book. But ultimately, through my research for the book, talking to thousands of people across Australia, the number one desire people shared is that they want to be seen, heard, valued and cared for at work. And ultimately the word love kept coming up, which is interesting. You know, I want, I want to be loved. I want to be liked by my colleagues, are my boss. I want to be told I'm doing a good job. So being an upstander simply means recognizing when something is wrong and acting to make it right. So what we've seen with the swell of movements across the globe, from Me Too to Black Lives Matter, you know, even the climate movement, is people are wanting to pay attention to where they've previously been a bystander. They're looking at some of the things, you know, unconscious bias. What have we not been paying attention to? And ultimately, how is this impacting the people within our organization, our human capital, but ultimately then the top line productivity and business success and building up standard cultures from the ground up that can ultimately create these thriving cultures that can last the decade of change and ultimately keep bringing good talent into the organization, but also sustain them because we're in a crisis with our, with our people at the moment and attracting and retaining talent.

That's all really great insight, Jessica. I think there's a lot for leaders to be unpacking there, but a lot of it is, I don't want to use the word common sense because it almost downplays it, but it is just, you know, thinking about how you affect other people, thinking about, you know, your actions and how that helps someone to come to work and feel happy on a day to day basis. Right.

Oh, so. And it is common sense. You know, a leader was reading my book last week and reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, this is all stuff that I've forgotten about. Not because I'm a bad person, but because I'm so busy. I'm in a massive CEO position, you know, leading one of Australia's biggest companies. Yeah. Sometimes you forget the higher you go up the food chain, you're using his words, he said, the more disconnected you can feel. And just the simple tip of doing listening tours around the business and organization, listening to the people looking at the body language when you approach them, are they open and receptive? Are they willing to share their insight, emotions and feelings? And he said that was a groundbreaking tool that he knew about but had kind of forgotten about throughout the last couple of years of busyness.

It's that busyness, isn't it?

Yeah.

And we're speaking with Jessica Hickman, workplace culture specialist. And we'll be back on the other side of this break. And we're back with Jessica, the founder and director of Bullyology. And you've been sharing some really great insights for us around being an upstander as opposed to a bystander. And just to continue on from that conversation a little bit, if there were three things that you'd ask leaders to commit to in order to reduce bullying in the workplace, what would they be?

Okay, so the first one is just to stop, pause, and reflect. As I've mentioned a few times, you know, the busyness can also be an enemy to our success when we're constantly on that hamster wheel, expected to do more, achieve more, and be more. And also that pressure is felt across the individuals in the business and organization. So the first step I would ask, you know, people listening to this podcast to do is just stop, pause and reflect. Look around their current environment, observe some of the relationships and dynamics playing out, observe how you're playing your part within the organization. Are you open and receptive, you know, to others, you know, emotions, feelings, and sharing some of their struggles, or are you quite short, blended, busy, that you don't actually have opportunity to deepen rapport with colleagues. So, you know, step number one really is to look and scan your environment. A great way that to do this is to imagine Yourself as an eagle or, you know, big brothers watching from a third party perspective, zoom over your organizations and just document some of the things you observe on that day or week or month. It's a great tool observation. Step number two, really, my tip would be to deepen your listening skills. I don't mean simply hearing the words your colleagues say or the directions, but the conscious listening. Through writing my book and my research, I realized that the busier we get and the more overwhelmed and stressed with life and work, the more we're rushing in meetings, attending a meeting with the agenda to just share our point and leave. Rather than creating what I call yourself as an empty vest vessel, sitting down and emptying all the beliefs, you know, the ideas and the dialogue to simply connect deeper with your colleagues. And what we've seemed to have slipped into as a culture, particularly leaders, is booking meetings back to back without giving ourselves time, just to decompress that information and consciously listen to our colleagues and deepen that rapport without rushing from one task to the next and meeting to meet into meeting. So simply they put an opportunity or options in your calendar to create a listening opportunity. And whether that's like I previously mentioned, a listening tool with no agenda other than just to listen to your people you work with and your colleagues and peers and see how that could shift your relationships and the culture. And step number three really is to learn to learn about topics such as this, to lean into workplace culture, to topics such as bullying, harassment, discrimination. Unless something sometimes, sometimes impacts you or you get in trouble, as a leader, you don't necessarily lean into topics that are quite uncomfortable or roll them out within your organization. There seems to be this culture of avoidance, which is something I found time and time again in my book. Leaders say. Well, we did a bullying or harassment policy a while ago and a quick training so to learn more about how you can develop a speak up culture. And again, my book is something that is just a simple guide for leadership, but think about how you can learn as a leader and individual, but also focus on what you need to unlearn. So I think that we all pick up bad habits, traits, beliefs from working in organizations, good and bad, but also as individuals. We are programmed with our language and beliefs from childhood. And I found from talking to people and doing research for the book and my workshops, good people were getting in trouble for casual racism, sexism or banter, which was becoming the enemy to success in the workplace. So I would encourage people listening to this today to sit and have a reflection of some of your Self observations about maybe some of the behaviors and beliefs that you've learned what may be limiting your success. That can be unconscious bias. Right.

There's so many great insights there. I think there's a lot to unpack. But there's something that really struck me when you're talking about. It's around this idea of busyness and calendars are booked back to back, which I remember the first time I saw that in a role I went in and I thought, how is anyone actually getting any work done? And so what I think was probably happening is not only were they going into those meetings purely focused on what they were going to talk about, as you said, but they were also then doing work throughout those meetings. So they weren't really at the meeting in the same way because they had to do that work to keep up with their day. So I think there's definitely something in that about giving yourself some space and it lends itself to creativity as well. Right. If we're so busy that we're rushing from meeting to meeting meeting, how can you find solutions to these sort of problems?

Absolutely. And look, I've had a few leaders, well, more than a few actually, that were accused of bullying and micromanaging through the pandemic. And what was happening was the work life balance and divide was shifted. We're working at home, but also when you're backed up with meetings upon meetings and meetings for meetings in the day, you then take your work home. Then you're allocating tasks to your team and emailing people late at night, night, you're also then on high alert, your nervous system is heightened, the phone comes to the bedroom with you and then you're checking emails in the middle of the night. And before you step out of bed and ground yourself each morning, you're already in that work mode without actually just slowing down. So that has been impacting a lot of workplace cultures and how people are showing up because they're fatigued, they're tired, and they're not giving themselves that off button to actually reset. And that's sometimes causing toxicity in teams and leadership. And also the culture of perceived bullying or suddenly micromanaging because of overwhelming fatigue.

It'S almost like we're chasing higher productivity by trying to work longer hours. But we're probably less effective because of that, aren't we? So there's something that needs to be looked at there.

Absolutely. And some organizations are doing great things. And you know, running my own business, working from home some days I've realized that my energy flow, some Days, we all wake up and go, oh, my gosh, I've got nothing in the tank this morning. And then, then, you know, two o', clock, you're like, right, I'm ready to rumble. And I think it just needs to be. The biggest word I share in my workshop is trust and understanding that we're all, you know, living very different worlds now, looking after the kids, working at home, shared care, and, you know, managing workloads. And as individuals and humans, we move in different energy flows. So again, you know, having a chat with your manager or your team and saying, hey, look, you know, I'm not as productive in the morning, but are you happy if I work a little bit later? Or. It may change day to day, but the biggest thing is trust and not micromanaging that process and trusting that the work will get delivered.

So I guess this is a good segue into what would you like to see over the next five years through the work that you're doing and within the field that you're studying as well.

Oh, my biggest dream is bullying. And harassment is extinct. But, you know, I'd be out of work then, and that's unrealistic. Look, throughout my work, I share with people that I'm not naive enough to assume that bullying, harassment, harassment will disappear overnight and toxic behaviors, discrimination, racism. But what I hope is I'm spending a lot of time at the moment educating what I call the upstander generation. So, you know, the emerging talent coming into organizations, university students that have grown up in the movement era of social media that are, you know, starting to speak up about what they want, their rights, their beliefs. And I'm spending a lot of time working with organization leaders that often sit in a very different generation. And I'm seeing, you know, this rub between different generations or how do we manage them, or they don't understand us. And understanding that, you know, in the next 10 years, or not even 10 years now, eight years, you know, by 2030, 75% of the workforce are going to be millennials, according to research. So, you know, unpacking how the modern leadership looks in the next generation and spending my life and dedicated my work to, you know, creating this change over the next 10, 20, 50 years. But I realized through my work, and that's why I call it upstander movement, because it's not me leading the movement, it's me igniting a conversation and hoping then that then upstanders trickle the conversation to their organization teams, mentor and influence the next generation, and ultimately create a more hopeful and purposeful future for us all. But for my future kids and, you know, whoever, I think that's a great.

Vision and we'd love to chat with you again down the track and see how things are going. Because I think conversations like this, as you say, they bring awareness as they bring education, and it helps us all to move forward. Right.

Beautiful. Thank you so much for spending time talking about this and thank you for being an upstander.

You're very welcome. You're very welcome. Lovely to have you on the show today.

Thank you.

Like to say thank you to our listeners for joining today. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do give us a rating on whatever platform you use to listen to podcasts as it helps other HR and people professionals to discover and enjoy this show. If there are any topics you'd to like, like us to cover, please reach out to me@editorialader.com and please make sure that you're subscribed to us. You can do that on our website@hrleader.com thank you again, Jessica Hickman.

Thanks. Bye.