The Catalyst for Bullylogy with Founder Jessica Hickman | Saxton Speakers

I'm actually not a psychologist. But what I realized pretty quickly as a leader, as a human in the workplace, we actually don't need to have all the answers, we just sometimes need to listen and then ask for help or signpost someone to help. So I realized the first step to create change was safety, to speak up. The second step was equipping everyone in the workforce with the toolkit to know how to recognize the signs and sign post people for help. So we started to feel the culture shift and change and over time, people were asking for help. We were signposting people to mental health support, to the gp, to services and providers. I was nominated as Northern Territory Young Achiever of the Year. Pretty good for a girl from Wales. My mum was proud of and nominated as Exceptional Women in resources. And I had a whole table full of awards that, yes, had my name on them, but more importantly, were creating change for the people I cared about. But the reason I tell you this story isn't a gloat about my success. Even though I'm super proud of what we achieved, my life changed overnight. At a click of a finger. I had a new manager, a a leader who was in charge of human resources, the people and humans within the business. But unfortunately, this person was a serious perpetrator of injustice. And because of my leadership style, my kindness, my empathy, my trust and rapport with the workforce, also my capability to deliver. This made me a target of bullying and harassment, which escalated over a three and a half year period. It started with subtle threats about my job or competency, to undermining me in meetings in front of my male peers in the room, to making gender based slurs, to laughing at my accent and the way I looked. The whole goal was to break down my confidence and self esteem. But Little Miss Stubborn thought, I will not be pushed out of a workplace, an organisation, for doing a good job. Also, I will not be pushed out of a country for doing a good job because I was on a visa. So I stayed. And over time, the bullying went from subtle comments and backhanded and emails and embarrassment and shame to more physical bullying, where one day I walked into the office to start the day and my manager, my leader, threw a folder that hit me in the face. And at that moment I realized that there's a complexity with regards to bullying. In fact, Little Miss Stubborn had reported the bullying 32 times, 32 times to the senior leaders that if they chose to, had the power and influence to stop the bullying immediately, if they chose to. But unfortunately, that resolution never came for me, there was a lot of promises, but nothing ever got done. I was told, toughen up, princess. It's just the industry or you look fine, it can't be impacting you that much. Although I was having sleepless nights, sometimes physically vomiting before work, I had aches and pains and migraines and even gut health issues from the trauma. And I didn't actually realize the complexity of working in an often violent environment until June 2017, when I found myself in the hospital bed burnt out and traumatized from constantly having my nervous system heightened day in, day out. But that was the turning point for me in my life, because as I lay in that hospital bed, I had two options. To allow this experience to ultimately floor me, or to use this experience to create education to inspire people to also speak up and never give up. But I realized in that moment, yes, we will have bullies and perpetrators of violence that that impact our workplaces and community groups and society as a whole. And people, unfortunately, they prey on and target for often being highly competent and kind. But the biggest issue in Australia is a leadership crisis where people become bystanders to the injustice. They don't speak up because they think that it will resolve itself. And often I would look around the open plan office and think about how could good humans, often friends and colleagues and pe, choose to look the other way, to look down, to pretend they don't hear the comments in meetings. And this was a catalyst for everything I do now because I learned about something called the bystander effect. And the bystander effect is widely researched and was coined by social psychologists John Daly and Bib lantine following the 1964 murder of a lady called Kitty Genovese. And Kitty Genovese was brutally attacked and murdered in New York. And why this is such a staggering story is because there were actually 38 witnesses. And when the police investigated this violent act, it was found. No one reported it to the police.