The Emerging Cost of Workplace Isolation: What Committed Leaders Need to Know with Marie Gervais

Are you noticing more empty chairs at meetings? Perhaps you see a surge in digital messages replacing any kind of face-to-face interactions. This could be a sign that isolation is not just affecting your team's morale but also hitting you where it hurts the most— your bottom line. The fact is we are lacking social connections at work and it's hurting our businesses big time. And that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast that challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, Customer Experience Expert Marc Haine, As he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Welcome to this episode. I am your host, customer and employee experience strategist Marc And I'm so glad that you're here with us today. My guest for this episode is workplace happiness enthusiast, Marie Gervais. Today, we are taking a deep dive into an issue that is silently corroding the very fabric of our workplaces. Don't think that this issue is in your workplace? Think again. There's all sorts of research to say that it exists and it is pervasive. So, my one ask for you today is that if you know somebody who could use this information that we're sharing today, please go ahead and share a link to this episode. This is so important in supporting the mental well-beings of our workplaces. You know, last Monday I had a very interesting conversation with a woman who invested years developing her career as a dental hygienist under the mentorship of an amazing leader and dentist. She thrived for the first 5 years of her career. She told me that for those first 5 years, she was on purpose. But when he sold the practice and a new leader took over, the place was never the same. The new leader shot down her contributions and her ideas, stepping all over her initiatives to create great patient experiences and focus solely on the one thing he was wanting to do, which was grinding out patients one by one and all their appointments. His typical retort to anything was, just concentrate on your job, all right? And she said, in spite of having people around me the whole time, I had never felt so lonely in my entire life. It's a problem costing companies more than just dollars. It's costing the well-being of every employee on payroll. And that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, are you nurturing an environment that fosters genuine connections? Or are you inadvertently contributing to a culture of isolation? This is not a yes/no answer. This is something you really need to dig into because I have a sneaking suspicion That even if you think that you have an open culture of contributions and connection, you will find that there are people out on the margins who might not say that they are. So, what does your business look like? I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. Go ahead and post this podcast on your favorite social media channel. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and put your comments down. Would love to see the comments. Would love to see your part of the conversation. And I'd love for you to share some of your experiences as well. As I mentioned, my guest today is a career trauma coach and stands at the forefront of transforming workplace environments. From emotional freedom techniques to career mapping, she not just coaches professionals. She is rewriting the narrative of what workplace happiness is all about. Marie Gervais is an author, a researcher, and a certified coach. Her approach blends the sacred, scientific, and experiential to help us navigate the often turbulent waters of modern work life. Whether she's helping you map your career path or breaking down emotional barriers, Marie brings a fresh authoritative perspective to the complexities of workplace relationships. Marie is also going to be one of our featured speakers at the TEDxStrathcona Women's Conference coming up in June. Marie, welcome to the show!

Thank you, Marc. It's an honor to be here. And that's the best intro I've ever had. I wish I could take it and put it in as the beginning of my podcast.

Before we get down into today's topic though, could you tell us a little bit about who your clients are and how you serve them?

My clients are typically high-level professionals or managers. Some of them are managers. Some are just high-level senior professionals. And they are typically Type A personalities. They're really driven. They have a lot of expertise and they're stressed to the max. They have difficulties where they start avoiding things and they don't know why. They start to notice that they're having physical symptoms that they didn't have before. And that's usually when they come to me for coaching.

And so, it goes beyond what we're talking about today. What you coach is not just this idea of isolation and stuff. The whole idea of career trauma is much bigger, isn't it?

Oh, yes. Yes.

So, could you just talk a little bit about this? Because when I saw your bio and you and I connected because we're organizing this TEDx talk, and I just thought this is something that people need to hear about. Talk a little bit about what career trauma is and what are some of the things you do to help alleviate some of that?

So, career trauma is distressing or harmful experiences that people encounter in their professional lives. that have a lasting negative effect on their well-being, their self-esteem, and their ability to function effectively in the workplace. And the experiences can be a one-time negative event, like for example, being unexpectedly laid off, or it can be a series of cumulative events like being ignored and discredited over time and then passed over for promotion 2 or 3 times.

Yeah, you know, it's funny because the young lady that I was talking about at the very beginning, She's at the point in her career now where she's looking to step out of healthcare because she has so much trauma around working for these profit-driven dentists who are not patient-centric. And she's finding that there's a disparity between her value systems and their value systems. And this idea of just shutting people down constantly has just— it's made her look at her investment into the career of choice and saying, I can't do this anymore.

Yeah. And also thinking that there's a big values disconnect between what she sees as being her purpose and what she's being required to do. And that she's just told, don't think. When people say, don't think, just do what you've been assigned, nobody gets any meaning out of that. Nobody gets purpose out of that.

Right. And so at the beginning of this episode, I alluded within this episode about this idea of interpersonal relationships at work and this idea of loneliness. Can you describe the current state of interpersonal relationships in today's modern workplaces? Why are they deteriorating?

Well, what we're seeing is a big addiction to devices. And then in addition to that, we're seeing people getting dopamine hits from constant referral back to their social media because that's what gives them a feeling of satisfaction because they don't have much purpose in their jobs, just like the dental hygienist you talked about. So that's part of it. The other thing is a general globalized anxiety around climate change, around the distress around the increasing number of significant wars that are all over the world. It's not just that every war is significant, but now it's looking like it's impacting every country all the time. That's a constant low-level anxiety for people that causes them to feel isolated on its own. And then we have developed this habit of being Not speaking to people. And then COVID made that worse. So not speaking to people, not speaking on the phone, and people will prefer to text. And I even did an entire coaching session with somebody who came to me for just a couple of sessions. I did an entire session with this woman where she was talking about an argument she had with her brother that had really caused her to not be able to function at work because it was such a huge argument. And then I found out that the entire argument took place over 3 days entirely by text.

Wow.

And had they just had a conversation about it on the phone, it would've not exploded to the level that it did because you just can't, you don't have multiple sensory influences around you. You can't pick up on people's faces. You can't ask how they're feeling. You can't say, oh, how did that land with you? Because you just got text and you have nothing to do that. So that has increased the level of conflict in the workplace and that makes people less likely to want to connect. And then you also have people working virtually remotely. I've spoken to a couple of engineers who told me that their team meetings every week by their managers are run by the manager who never shows his or her face. They're just a black box. And they have never, these engineering companies have never seen the face of their manager. And they typically all have their cameras off too. So, you have no idea who's paying attention to what, and it feels very disconnected.

Yeah.

He's experiencing, the one that I was speaking to for the longest amount of time, He's experiencing so much anxiety and loneliness. He feels completely disconnected from the world. And it's, imagine that your entire work experience is a bunch of black boxes and then you work on your numbers and your drawings and then more black boxes and that's it. There's nothing human about it. It feels awful to him.

So, and we could also have issues where people suffer some definition of loneliness, even if they are in a packed workspace with cubicles and lunchrooms and everything else, that loneliness isn't just because people are by themselves. Can you talk a little bit about that? What that, what that feel like or look like?

Well, people can feel lonely if they just don't have personal connection in their lives. And if they don't have personal connection in the workplace, if you're working with a whole bunch of people in a cubicle, There have been a number of research studies that have been done on the effectiveness of cubicles, and they're basically not effective at all. When you have people in cubicles, they interact with each other less unless you have social spaces where they can gather and where they're encouraged to gather. One of the construction companies that I worked with, they had a beautiful lunchroom, and they actually rang a bell, like as if people were in school. They rang a bell and told everybody at 12 that they had to sign off and go to the lunchroom and eat their lunch and talk to people. And so that was a, and if they couldn't be there, they had to be accountable for why they couldn't be there that day. But I think that that was probably a good idea because in that company, people are talking to each other, connecting, and they don't feel lonely. But in most other situations, people do feel lonely.

Yeah. And you know, you mentioned stuff that's going on in the world, and I can imagine that belief systems are being shaken to their core. You know, I mean, the Gaza-Palestinian war is one aspect of it that we're seeing. flaring up all different in different areas. We're seeing, you know, in the United States, we're seeing the Republican-Democrat, the elections are on the, on the throes. And, and so it seems like the more that we have kind of these internal conflicts, we don't seem to have a medium by which we can safely sit down and have really open, honest debate. And so instead people just shut their mouths and just go, I'm not talking to that person.

It's not just debate. It's just, interest in each other. Before the pandemic, I was speaking with the first Black man who was appointed to the national security IT for US military. So, he had a very stressful job and they had a very low diversity index and they, you know, everybody pretty much looked the same and was about the same age. And he just, since he was the manager and he had some control over it, he just asked people to pick from a list of 5 questions to get to know everybody in the meeting. So, if they're meeting with one person, pick one thing. So, like, where did you grow up when you were a child? Do you have any fond memories of it? What do you do for fun when you're not at work? You know, like something like that. It had nothing to do with any kind of inclusion metric. It was just getting to know people. And they were supposed to spend every meeting, whether it was one-on-one or a small group or any kind of virtual remote, they're supposed to spend between 2 and 5 minutes at the beginning of every meeting doing something like that where they got to know each other. And by the end of 18 months, they had increased the type of person that was working for them by 13% and 24% by the end of 2 years. And they didn't do anything different. They just talked to each other, got to know each other. And then they started recommending people that they knew to come and work there. And of course, they had to go through very difficult security screening and stuff like that. But it was really interesting how just that interpersonal connection was so significant.

Yeah.

That it made people feel more inclusive.

It's really interesting. How aware do you think leaders are of isolation problems within their organizations?

Well, I'm just guessing at this because I don't have anything to base it on. But it seems to be pretty low from my experience with people. I'd say most of the leadership that I speak to for my clients because I have large industry clients for contracts. And then, I also have one-on-one coaching clients and sometimes small groups as well. But I'd say most of the people in the leadership position are firstly completely unaware of their own stress level.

Yep.

Completely. And they don't even know that they're just being triggered all day from their own stress because they're in a state of anxiety and paranoia. And so, they're unaware of their own stress level and they're disconnecting more and more. And they think that they should push off anything that has to do with interpersonal to somebody else. It's not my job. I'm in charge of making the money and making sure the sales keep coming in and you guys get paid. So, not my job. But if a leader does not show the example and isn't concerned about their people, nobody's going to follow.

Right.

And so, of course, the more stressed they are, the more disconnected they are, the less they see. So, what are the common signs that a workplace is suffering from high levels of isolation among its staff? Because there's got to be some indicators.

Well, people are constantly on edge. They have difficulty focusing, lots of brain fog. They tend to have large mood swings or extreme reactions to things that seem that they are not particularly worthy of being reacted to because people are perceiving something that's actually quite safe as being something that's dangerous. So that would be, that would be another sign. And then people also have a lot more chronic pain, a lot more anxiety, and they, it's affecting them. They become more avoidant. So you see that higher levels of avoidance. I use assessments as well with my industry clients, and I'm seeing the levels of avoidance going up like this.

Hmm.

So before you'd have approximately a third of the workplace would have avoidance as one or two of their conflict styles, default conflict styles. And they would range, like some would be 50 or 60% and others would be up in the 80s. But now it's over 60% and the avoidance levels are really high.

Hmm. So is this manifesting itself just in the workplace or do you think people are getting, being affected by their home? And their social base as well.

Oh yes, it's all interconnected, right?

We're organic with the world. It's like dominoes, right?

Yeah, but it's more like we impact society and society impacts us and it's like this all the time. So I think a sign that I've seen is I have a neighborhood development project on my street and the surrounding area. And so over the past 3 or 4 years, and I've been going to people's homes and saying, hi, I'm your neighbor and I live in this house number over here. And I just want to get to know more of the people on my street so that we can be a better community. And so what's really interesting is that probably 3 or 4 of the houses are right there. They look out the window, they see me, they don't open the door.

Yes.

And if they do open the door, as soon as they realize I'm not selling anything, they relax. I'm not selling anything. I'm not trying to convert them to my political party. So they relax with that. But then afterwards, when you ask them to connect further, like, so, you know, Do you think of a neighborhood barbecue or would you like to go join the neighborhood walking group? Or do you have children who'd like to be in a neighborhood children's class? Then all of a sudden they go, oh, I don't know, I have, and people are saying this to me all the time. They're saying, I don't know, I have anxiety about going to new places. And I never heard that before. I have anxiety about meeting people in new places. And so I don't think my kids should go. Well, then you're just transferring that anxiety onto your kids, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so that's been coming up a lot. That's really interesting. Yeah. Like, so I'm thinking, well, this is, and then of course we don't know what's going on in the background because domestic violence numbers have gone up. So we don't know if they're just trying to protect themselves from the outside gaze for something that, that could be really detrimental. So those are also things that can be affecting people and addictions. Addictions have gone up like crazy and especially the opioid crisis. So when you look at all that, it's surprising we're talking to each other at all.

And again, you know, they all go side by side. If somebody's isolated, then some of their behaviors become questionable because they don't have peers or they don't have a community that is setting the mores and the norms they operate from. And so people, you know, I think porn has gone up as well. I saw some stat a couple of months ago that the propensity towards pornography has just skyrocketed. And it's like, so we have all these people who aren't actually interacting with other human beings.

They can't have a real relationship with people because of that, right? Because everything is based on something that doesn't ever exist and never has existed. It's somebody's fantasy that they've put together. And so then no human being could ever match up to that. And it's not real because it's not an authentic connection. You're not actually learning about the other person, seeing the other person as a human being that's worth interacting with. And that causes a lot of youth to not want to go out with each other and go on dates. The incidence of youth going on dates has gone down so far that, you know, people are wondering why. Girls are saying that they're scared they're going to be hurt because the influence of pornography. And, you know, they think someone's just going to try and strangle them from the time they meet them. You know, and the boys are scared they're going to lose their macho image and, you know, and not be able to perform. And the whole thing is such a mess because it's just about people being friends with each other, knowing each other. And yeah, so we need to reconnect at the heart level and ask people some more meaningful questions too.

I will tell you that I'm really proud of my community. I live in Devon, And we have, in the summertime, we have a program that's spearheaded by the community called Neighborly Devon, where we get Tim Hortons. Tim Hortons used to be a sponsor. They weren't last year, but we would actually go onto people's lawns, set up a coffee setup with some cookies, and then go knocking on the doors and say, come and have a coffee with your neighbors.

I love it.

And it was so much fun. And it was like people were just so blown away. But to your point, I'd knock on doors and go, oh no, I'm sorry, I'm too busy. Or they look through, wouldn't even answer the door. And so, uh, so it's, it is a challenge. I think this human dynamic thing is really a challenge. So I'd like to get into some steps that we can take to reverse this trend, and we'll do that right after this.

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Welcome back. I am speaking with career trauma coach Marie Gervais, and we're having a great little conversation here, and we're tapping into all sorts of stuff. This idea of interpersonal relationship, why does interpersonal relationship building at work matter more now than ever before? Because to me, it's smacking of we need intentionality behind any kind of program.

Oh, for sure. That's exactly what we need is intentionality. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a program as in the example that I demonstrated where, you know, ask any of these questions or any questions you like as long as you ask one question before you start the meeting and listen to the response and respond back to it. So I don't, I think I spoke with a social worker who said to me, we don't need more programs. We need more people talking to each other. So I think that aside, yes, there are things that we can do to start gathering inter, you know, more better interpersonal relationships, but it's such a big problem that the World Health Organization said it's a global epidemic that's affecting us just on the physical level, the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Wow.

That's just the physical.

That's a detriment on our physicality.

That's right. On our physical health and cutting our lifespan down by 6 years. And so that's from the World Health. And then the Canadian Mental Health and Addictions Association put out a couple of reports. And the most recent one was where 45% of people who are working now in any level of the organization feel that they have not a single person that they would connect with at work. And 40% of employed Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34, 40% are at a mental health breaking point because of loneliness. That is affecting the workplace. If you want to look at it from a bottom line perspective, $200 billion a year. $200 billion a year.

Yeah, because you have turnover, you have disengagement and so on. The big question I had when you said that was Do people know that?

No, I don't think so. That's why I wanted to talk about this today.

So, if leaders can't spot it and people don't know it, what red flag can we propose that would be a really good indicator that we have problems?

I think that the flags are starting to occur on their own. I'll give you one example and then I'll talk about some steps. But so, I have a client that's a transportation company. And they said that at this point, they've never seen so many difficulties with mental health among their truck drivers. And people used to be connecting with each other on the radio, and now they aren't. Everything is digital. So they will go hours and hours and hours with no connection with another person. And they're breaking down on the road. They're stopping on the side of the road and calling the dispatchers and sobbing because they're so lonely. And then the other thing is when they come back, everything is submitted without seeing a real person. So they go from one person to the next and each person says, I don't have time for you, because they need to get an answer to the situation. So this particular manager decided she was going to have at least monthly meetings with the drivers and that they would set the agenda and she would have one or two things and the rest was all theirs. And they were so excited about it, they could hardly wait. They were there like an hour early and If it was their day off, they came anyway, and they were very excited. And they've had several of these meetings now, and the drivers say, we really need these meetings because this is how we feel connected. So that's one thing. And then she said, this is what I would like to propose. And if we do it, we'll be cutting edge in the whole transportation industry because everybody's having these same isolation problems. And she said, I would like to propose you talk to a real person and we train some people to listen because the people that are working here don't know how to listen and they're scared of listening. So we train them to listen and to not be scared of listening to somebody when they're talking, because it's not every conversation is gonna turn into an emotional meltdown, especially if you have frequent ones, they won't be emotional meltdowns. So train people to listen and to respond. And just so do that and then get people to speak to a real person first or a phone call and maybe follow it up with an email if that warrants it and only use text and WhatsApp for logistics.

Mm-hmm.

And she said, if we could try that, for a month, we'd see a huge decline in HR complaints, in drivers having, you know, mental health breakdowns on the road. We would see all of that go down because people just feel so isolated. So she already gave us the great program. She just already said, let's just, let's try this for a month and see how it works. And of course people will say, no, I don't want to do that. But if it's this limited time period and you get started on it and you see the benefits, I think that would help a lot.

I'm sure, I'm hoping that the audience got goosebumps like I did as you said that. Let's do a quick little check-in, Marie. If this is resonating with the audience, how can they get in touch with you?

They can contact me on LinkedIn. It's Marie Gerbeis, G-E-R-B-E-I-S. So Marie Gerbeis. And my handle in LinkedIn is Leaders Training. So it's Marie Gerbeis Leaders Training. So you can find me that way because there are lots of Marie Gerbeis in this world. So that's one. You can also go to my website, which is shiftworkplace.com. And you can connect with me there.

Terrific. I'm really liking this idea. I do know that there are corporate environments where if you went to the leader and you said, you know what, we want to pull people together and for 10 minutes, first thing in the morning, to do kind of a check-in with them, I know that some of them will just see dollar signs. It's like, hey, if we're not out on the road for those 10 minutes, that's 10 minutes we're How do we supersede that? How can we help these leaders kind of see a value and get over this idea that this idea of what they define as productivity is skewed?

Can I give you another story?

Please. I love stories.

Okay.

All right.

So, this story. So, I don't currently work with a lot of people in the food processing industry, but I did in the first 6 years of my business. I worked with lots. And so, I was with a meat processing plant, which had about 3,000 workers. So, it's pretty big. That's a lot of people in one plant, right?

Yes.

And they decided to start having line meetings where everybody on the line would contribute to solving the problems. And they would have one line meeting a week. Then they also decided that when they had a customer come in, what they were going to do was they would bring somebody from the floor, one of the supervisors, one of the managers, and one of the QA people in with the customer and walk them through the plant. And let them know what they were proud of and what they— why they liked working there as they're talking to the customer. So, they did those 2 things and their business shot up like crazy. And when a Japanese customer showed up unexpectedly to do an audit and gave them a rave review afterwards, that customer shifted all their business from 3 other plants in North America to this meat processing plant in Alberta. You know why? Because they said people were happy at work. And they were so enthusiastic about working there that they thought they must be paying really close attention to their jobs because they're not worried about something happening to them. So, because they're so happy at work and they're proud of working here, we want all our business to be with you. So—

Love it. Look at the spinoff, right?

The bottom line is pretty much never direct. If you look at the results from training, almost any training that you do is going to have some results. But the biggest result is in the morale because people feel like my company cares about me. That's why they're letting me do this training and they're paying for it and they're giving me the time to do it. So, they care about me, so I must matter. And so, the morale shifts and other things start to change as a result. So, no matter what training you do, as long as the morale shifts because people feel like you care about them and the care metric goes up even higher when the people at the top hear the frontline people's stories about the training. So, they go, oh, I used to come to work and be really bored, and now I'm training everybody on cross-shifts. And it's really, I feel so like things matter so much because now we know how to do this better. And so then the top brass will go, wow, this is amazing. And it always makes a difference in the bottom line. But if you only focus on the bottom line, it's like using 10% of your brain.

Yeah. We see how skewed it is, the industrial kind of age models, how skewed it is. If you're always focusing on the bottom lines, then you're never tapping into the magic of the people that you have on staff.

Mm-hmm.

You just can't. You just— the two don't coexist. So, to your point, and what's interesting about this thing from the meatpacking plant, you know, I firmly believe that if people say something, they believe it. And so, you know, what happens is they— you get these people who are a positive role model on the line. And they like what they do and they're able to verbalize it. And so, the more they talk about it, the more their coworkers start to talk about it. And the more they talk about it, the more they believe it. And it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of satisfaction.

Well, from that same plant, the worst place to work from anybody's perspective from the outside is the entrails, right? The offal, right? So, people think that would be the worst place. That is the most popular department. Anybody that goes there never wants to leave, even if they can get higher pay. And it's because the manager and the supervisors that work there love what they do. They go, you know, we're the most important department here because if we weren't here, everything would be contaminated. We wouldn't be able to make money. People would die. We are the basis of this whole organization. Without us, nothing would function. And they complimented their workers and they said, now look at this glistening intestines. Isn't that beautiful? Look at all that iridescence that you see there. Where else would you see that if you weren't working here? Isn't it a gift to be working here?

Finding all the things for it.

Getting over the smell was my big obstacle.

But, but there you go.

I mean, see how any job can be wonderful if people are acknowledged and seen and treated like human beings. And if the job is painted, it's— she wasn't doing— the person who's a manager was a woman. She wasn't doing this to, you know, pull the wool over somebody's eyes. She actually authentically loved her job, loved working with people, and was very proud of it. And that's what makes the difference.

Absolutely. Let's talk about the role of emotional intelligence because I think this is a coin that has 2 sides. We have one side of the employee's personal ability to recognize how they handle stress, how they handle other people, how they handle criticism, and so on. But then on the other side of the coin is the leaders. Can you talk a little bit about the role that emotional intelligence plays in overcoming this challenge of interpersonal interactions at work?

Well, there are 2 sides. One is emotional intelligence, which is knowing how to respond appropriately in a situation, right, depending on the cultural context, because emotional intelligence is culturally bound. So that's one part. But the other part is emotional responsiveness and resiliency, which comes from emotional regulation. So if you can learn to calm your own nervous system down, then you will start to see things the way they are instead of through the eyes of a trigger. So emotional regulation is the most important thing. I'm talking about that in the TED Talk, so I don't want to give it all away, but it does involve simple body processes that we already do. We just have to be more conscious about them.

Okay. So could you define a little bit better what that might look like from a physiological perspective or from a case study perspective for somebody who says, well, I know I'm pissed off. I just don't know what to do about it.

Well, actually naming it is the most important thing first off, is being able to name it. And interestingly, so this comes into the emotional intelligence part, people who have a very limited emotions vocabulary are the most dysregulated the most frequently.

Wow. Interesting.

Yeah. So actually using more range of emotions words in the way that you speak about things and asking people, how do you feel about this? How do we feel about this? Is this something we need to do anything about? That starts to create this sense that you're, when you become aware of your emotions. One of the supervisors that I worked with said to me, I used to walk around with this big ball of sort of a glom of emotions that I wasn't identifying. And now I'm going, oh, I think I'm anxious. Oh, I'm excited today. And he said, doing that has made me a much better supervisor because I'm actually aware of the way I'm feeling and not dumping it on everybody around me. So naming it is one really important thing. Naming the emotion and saying, that's how I feel in this moment. That's how I feel. I accept that that's how I feel in this moment. I'm feeling really pissed off in this moment. And I accept that that's how I'm feeling right now. That allows it to release from your body so it doesn't stay stuck.

I joke that, you know, we lose what we grew up with. You know, when we came home from elementary school and, you know, you're crying and you're saying, Johnny's picking on me. And mom would say, you know, you go back to school and you tell Johnny he's hurting your feelings. And of course, then you get the, you know, the, you get the awful beat out of you. But, but there's something to be said about that, that at some point we stop recognizing that our feelings are getting hurt and that we are allowed to have these feelings. And so I really love that idea that if you can pause for a second and say, how am I feeling? Like, what is it I'm actually feeling right this second? And then being able to name it, I think, is brilliant.

Yeah. And if you can't name it, you just say, I feel awful, or I feel bad, or like you said before, I'm feeling pissed off. And you don't, nobody else needs to hear it but you. You just tell yourself, because once you name something, you become responsible for it. And that's why people don't wanna name a problem because then they know they're gonna be responsible for it. So naming the emotion and saying, I accept it in this moment, allows the realm of possibility to open up. So that things can change in the next moment, right? So it allows your nervous system to calm down.

You know, and what's interesting about it though is I've been in lots of different cultures, work cultures, where when people were having a tough time, everybody knew about it. Nobody could actually say what it is, but they knew that they were walking on eggshells. They were avoiding, right? They were avoiding confrontation. They were doing anything they, because they knew that somebody was having a tough time. But yet, the person having the tough time didn't have the humility or the self-regulation to turn around and say, team, I'm having a tough time.

Well, if you do that, then that's admitting that you're a human being and that you're vulnerable. And that's pretty scary.

God forbid! God forbid we're human. I really like that thing you were talking about, this idea of having listeners. How can somebody start something like that within their organization? Because I think that's rather powerful.

I thought it was too. And really, I'm just reiterating her idea because I thought it was such a brilliant idea. She started by just going and asking people, if you were one of the people, say that the driver can see first or second, and you can listen to them for 5 minutes and just hear their story and then put it, you know, documented on our spreadsheet, would you be willing to do that? And everybody said, oh no, oh no, that would be too scary. And that's because their drivers are so emotionally dysregulated right now. But so, I think that that was important. So, then she said, well, wait a minute, how could we get people to do this? You know, and she said, I think we're going to have to have someone come in and do some training. But before we do that, we're going to have to let the leadership know what this is costing the organization. And so, that goes back to your bottom line story, right? That this is costing the organization big time. And if you don't care about that, then let's keep things as they are. And if you do care about it, then let's see if someone who's skilled in helping people to learn how to listen. It's basic communication, so it's not like you have to use somebody who has a doctorate. You just, there are lots of people who can facilitate communication workshops. Just help them that so that people feel they have some tools. And a, you know, a 2-hour workshop is not going to cost you that much money. And it will certainly help people to feel more confident so that if someone comes to them, they'll know what to do. And it'll also help them. I personally think we also need to probably go through some kind of a Mental health first aid course or training just to say, if somebody comes in really distraught and you don't know how to handle it, here are some things you can do. These are some resources that you could use, or this is the next person in the organization that you can send them to. Because people are scared that they won't be able to handle it and they don't know who goes— who they should go to next. So I do think it's important to, right now, because of the situation of the loneliness and everything, I think probably a mental health first aid would be— people feel a lot less scared about having an interaction. And then the other part would be just training and communication because we're missing it. We don't have it. And that we can trace that back to people not eating meals together in the home.

Yeah, that too.

Yeah.

It's so interesting. I came across a post yesterday on LinkedIn and it was Simon Sinek talking about somebody who he was interacting with, somebody who was having a really tough time. And he's like, why didn't you call me? And she goes, I did. But when he looked at the trail of text messages that she had sent, she'd be saying, how are you doing? What's up? And at no point did she turn around and say, I need to talk to somebody. And so they came up with a code word now that says, do you have 8 minutes?

That's good.

And according to that, 8 minutes is all you need in order to make a connection with somebody, make it meaningful enough. And it's not, do you have 5 minutes, which means you're going to take an hour. By saying it's 8 minutes becomes— creates that intentionality that, you know, oh, this is our code. You need my attention. And I thought that was so brilliant.

It is brilliant. And it reminds me of somebody who told me, this was a few years ago, but said they had an agreement with a couple of people in the organization where they would say coffee, question mark, or send a text coffee, question mark. And that meant I need to talk. There's a problem.

Yeah. So find out what the code is for your place, right?

Yeah, exactly.

It could be— heck, it could be pineapple. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Just have a code that lets people know that I just need some one-on-one time with somebody to interact with and to confide in. Yeah, something else that we did in one of our— one organization I was in was because we had all these different departments and we had a lot of infighting, a lot of people would be judging one department like sales or another person in receiving and shipping and all this sort of stuff that we actually brought people together and we actually did once a month, we would bring people in to do a virtues pick exercise. Where we brought people in to do, I don't know if you know the Virtues Project at all, but basically—

I use the Virtues Project every day. In fact, I even have cards here. This is one of my 7 different decks of virtues cards. I use it with all my clients. Brilliant.

Love it. And how powerful is that, right?

Very powerful.

How powerful it is that all of a sudden, you get people who have conflicts and they have challenges and they have obstacles come in and they're going around a table, pulling out a virtues card, defining the virtue, talking a little bit, and then talking about whether or not that's a strength or a weakness that they might have. And that's, you know, if they were to work on it, what would they need to do to work on it? And then there's acknowledgments. So people turn around and go, it's so funny that you think you're not generous because here's what I saw. And the whole interaction of, you know, 20 people around a table or 10 people around a table all working together through Virtues Project is just absolutely brilliant and knocks down those walls like crazy.

It does. Can I tell you a couple more ways that I use it?

Sure.

So like before a meeting, I'll have, I like using the cards. There's also a phone app so you can put it in the phone and then ask, you ask a random question, well, a question of something that you would like. And then you shake the phone and the virtue that comes up is the one that will, for some reason, randomly apply. So you will say, what virtue would we need to practice during this meeting to get the best results? And then you just pick something out and then I pick it out and it says, I can't get the camera, it's tact.

There you go, tact.

Okay.

Oh, so Let's, you know, so then you'd read what the virtue is, tact. And then you'd say, so at the end of the meeting, let's give ourselves a report card on how we did with tact, right?

Yes.

So then you're not, it doesn't take much time, but it orients people towards the higher self so that they're starting, it's not just emotions, it's your noble purpose, right? So you start moving towards your noble purpose. So that's one way to do it. You can also use it to solve problems by asking people to identify, they have a virtues list and they identify one thing in a story that someone told them about an obstacle they'd overcome. And so that's transformative in really high conflict situations. It really helps them. And what I do at the end of a coaching session is I go, so let's do a virtues pick to find out what virtue would help you get closer to your goal. And then we pick one and I say, what does that mean to you? And I also say, we wouldn't have that virtue if you weren't already doing it.

Right.

So you're either already doing it, like your generosity example, you're either already doing it and you just don't notice it, Or you're doing it, but in this situation, you need to think about it more intentionally, right? So it's never a deficit. It's a, we've already got it. We just have to make it happen.

I love it. That's so good. Hey, when we come back, I'd like to talk about some pitfalls and some cautionaries because I'm always afraid when people get new information, it becomes the bandaid of the month. And so let's talk a little bit about that and we'll do that right after this.

Attention meeting and event planners! Is your company or association planning a live or virtual conference, seminar, or staff retreat? Are you looking for a fresh, energetic perspective on what it takes to put on a jaw-dropping experience for your customers or staff? Book customer experience expert Marc Haine for your next group event. Past participants have said, Marc kept us ditches while teaching us how important and powerful actually designing our customer experience can be. Read more testimonials and find out how Marc can serve you and your group at marchaine.com. That's M-A-R-C-H-A-I-N-E.com.

As you can tell, Maria and I are committed to serving business leaders just like you. So, if you would like to explore how we could be of benefit, especially if you're planning a leadership retreat or a conference, drop us a line. Our contact details are in the show notes. Marie, as leaders start to focus on turning the tide of workplace isolation, is there any way that we can scorecard the initiative? How can they tell if they're investing in this, if it's working?

Well, they first have to check their own commitment level to it. So at every level, so we're going, if you're a high decision-making level or if you're medium decision-making level, if you're a frontline employee, whatever level you're at, you can commit to showing some care about the people that you're working with. And if you commit to doing that one time a day, it'll start to manifest throughout the organization. But you can also check your own commitment level. And this is something that I used when I was doing my EFT training, and you can use it to check your own resistance level too. So you can say, I commit to making one, you know, giving one compliment a day to somebody in my workplace. And then you say, well, how committed am I? Well, I'd like to, I'll try it. I wish I could do it. That's the lowest commitment level.

Mm-hmm.

And if that's the lowest one, then you go, right now I'm just at the, I'd like to do it. And that's the level I'm at right now. I accept that that's where I'm at in this moment. The next one will be, I want to. So then the desire is there, right? So you've got desire to do it. So want to is the next commitment level. And then I will do it. I am doing it. I am doing it is, that's proof that you're walking the talk, right? So that's the very, the very top level. So you can check your own commitment level and say, you know, I'm feeling kind of resistant to doing this right now because it's new to me, right? So I think I'm just at the wish or I'm at the want level and I'll accept that, but that's where I'm at right now. And then what happens is that people unconsciously have already undone their resistance and they're already starting to do it. So this is the subjective way that you can work with it, but it's quite powerful. People make significant changes when they accept that they are just not doing something or they're at the very basic commitment level.

Sure.

They'll even come back and say things like, well, you know, for 2 years I've been scared of applying for a job and now I've had 3 interviews and 1 job offer because they accepted that they just were scared of it and they didn't wanna do it and they weren't committed to doing it.

Sure.

Then it just opened it up. That's one thing. The other thing they can do is they can pick something that they all agree could be a metric. Like the IT securities manager I was telling you about, where he said, we've got these 5 questions and everybody ask one before each meeting. And we'll check in every week for the first month and then every month and see how this is working for you. And we'll do it for 3 months and then we'll see. We'll evaluate it.

Cool.

So, as soon as people have a deadline, a start and a finish, they feel so much better about it. Because if they think, oh no, This is going to be yet another flavor of the month that everyone, then we're going to jump off some other diving board into some other pool and I'm not on board, right? So if you give them a start and a finish and then afterwards evaluate, decide if they want to continue doing it and how, and that's just going to bring new ideas up. So I would say start with your own subjective commitment level and notice if you're feeling any resistance. I'm feeling resistant to this right now. Not sure why, but that's where I'm at at this moment. It'll start to change. And then have some kind of a simple thing that where people could ask, you know, 1 or 2 or 3 from a list, a personal question that allows them to connect with another person or to give them a compliment, 1 compliment a day, whatever your metric is. Everyone has to agree that that's going to be a metric they want to try and then give them a start and a finish. And I think that's going to get you going. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

How does a leader overcome kind of the challenge of something is brand new. This sounds really woo-woo, so I really don't want to participate. How do they overcome that kind of mindset within their team?

Within their team or within themselves?

Within their team. Like if a leader, if a middle manager, or even a CEO is listening to this and saying, yeah, I want to put something in place. But they're going to get resistance because it's like, you're just starting something brand new again and my life is stressful enough. And they get that pushback. How can they mitigate that?

You can say, well, that's fine. You could admit that you're feeling resistant right now and that you don't, you're not ready to start trying it. Well, just watch, see what's happening with those that are ready to try it. No obligation.

Yeah, see what the spinoff, yeah. So what you're saying is don't force it. Let people be people and do the people who are willing to do it and let the spinoff itself attract the people who are going to have the fear of missing out.

Yeah, and let people know you're in control of this. It's an initiative that you could benefit from. But if you're not willing to get started on this, that's fine. We can accept that. Different people have different levels of openness to trying new ideas, and we're okay with that. So then people don't feel so scared anymore.

Yeah.

Cautionaries. Anything that people should be on the lookout for?

Yeah.

Are there any cautionaries? Is there anything that people should be out for when they go out and push a program through? Anything they should avoid doing in order to To blow up in their face?

Well, first, don't push a program.

You have to prepare it. That's exactly what we just said.

Yeah, you have to prepare it first. So this is what I'm thinking of doing. What's your input? What would you like to add? This is like me getting this TED Talk going. I've now presented it to several different groups online. Next I'm going to do to people, live people. And each time they give me feedback and I go, wow, I would never have thought of that on my own. Thank you, right?

Yeah.

So, but in a lot of organizations, people go, we're just, this is right and we're just gonna push it through. But it never works when you do that. It's more like, this is what we're thinking of doing. What's your input? So gather the feedback, gather the input and listen to it, make adjustments and say, okay, now here's phase 2. What do you think about this? When do you think we could try this part of it? So you're gradually, you're building safety in people's nervous systems so that they're not feeling like this is being done to them. Done with them and for them, and they are contributing to the building of it all. So then it feels so much better for people. And you'll always have some naysayers, but don't focus on them. Focus on the ones that are your champions because those are the ones that are going to pull the others along. There's always a first follower. So once you've been through that process of massaging it with the group and they've had some input, then you're going to start looking for your champions. And those champions can sometimes come from surprising places. And as they start championing it, then you point to them instead of you because you're always going to get the resistance because you're the one in authority. But that first follower is the one who's going to get the second follower. And then there's a whole group of followers. And that's what you need to focus on is getting more followers.

Love that. Marie, this has been such a great discussion. Do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

Hmm. I think I've talked enough.

As we wrap up, is there a magical beam of wisdom that you'd like to share?

The thing that's coming to mind is that we are organic with the world. This is you and me and this is the world. And we are interacting constantly. We are influencing and being influenced. And if we can accept that, then we're going to move forward with connecting with each other.

Love it. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Connect with me on LinkedIn, Marie Gervais Leaders Training, or you can go to my website shiftworkplace.com.

Thank you so much, Marie. This has been brilliant. Thank you so much for sharing your passion and your expertise with us. It has absolutely been a brilliant light. Thank you for sharing with us.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, My offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, book a time on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my honor to be of service to you. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and leave a review or comment about this episode? I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? And of course, if you haven't done so yet, I gotta put it out there. Why don't you make sure you subscribe to this podcast? Click the button. Make sure that you subscribe because then you'll get notification when I bring you new content each and every week. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.

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