In this interview, Scott Levin, who calls himself a "Chief Peacekeeper," sits down with Catherine Mattice, CEO of Civility Partners, to discuss her company’s work in culture‑change consulting. Mattice explains that Civility Partners helps organizations build positive, respectful workplace environments, which she links to better decision‑making, innovation, lower turnover, and reduced absenteeism. She connects these workplace dynamics to family‑law mediation, noting that respect and civility between spouses can facilitate smoother divorces. The conversation delves into positive psychology, specifically the broaden‑and‑build theory, and how a positive emotional state expands cognitive capacity, leading to better decisions and creativity. Mattice defines resilience as the ability to view challenges as opportunities to overcome, emphasizing its importance for both employees and divorcing individuals (including children). She shares her personal journey into the field, sparked by studying a workplace bully during her master’s studies, which led her to create a business focused on eliminating bullying and fostering civility. Mattice describes typical bullying patterns—about 80% of cases involve a superior bullying a subordinate—and attributes bullying to hyper‑anxiety about competence and low emotional/social intelligence. The interview also covers practical details: Civility Partners works with organizations of any size or industry, and Mattice can be reached via Google, LinkedIn, her website (civilitypartners.com), and professional networks like ProVisors. The discussion concludes with mutual thanks and a reminder to watch future videos.
Chapters
Hey everybody, this is Scott Levin. I'm here today with my good friend Catherine Matthijs. How are you, Catherine?
Doing well, thanks.
Good. So Catherine is the CEO of Civility Partners. They are a really interesting company, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about Catherine and Civility Partners and then have a quick conversation about how she helps the world and then how her work kind of can relate to you know, family law and mediation and peacekeeping. So a little bit about Civility Partners. It's a— they are a culture change consulting company that partners with clients to help them create a positive workforce environment, workplace environment. So one of the phrases that really caught my attention on your website, Katherine, was that organizations with healthy workplace cultures have employees that get along and respect each other, meaning that they'll make better, more innovative decisions, and you'll have reduced turnover and absenteeism. And I really thought that, that, that kind of, you know, when you have respect for your spouse, even during a divorce process, you know, that's an important element of being able to, you know, successfully mediate, which is what I do. And I just thought that, that There seemed to be like a lot of parallels between, you know, kind of what you do and help in the workplace environment and what I kind of do in the mediation realm.
Yeah, you know, I'll comment on that. There is a lot of research in the world of positive psychology around what's called broaden and build, which is a theory that when you're feeling positive, your brain literally opens up and you're able to take in more information, you're able to process it better, you literally are able to make better decisions. Decisions because you're being more innovative and you're processing information. And so, you know, it just— and then you build this level of skills because of everything you just went through with your good decisions and your innovation. And then you just kind of continue to go up this path versus when you're in a really negative space, literally your reptilian brain is what's functioning. And then you're not making good decisions. You're in fight or flight. You're not stopping to think about decisions and innovation and So yeah, to your point, getting a divorce, if the more positive a place that you can be in, the better it will be. And there is research to support that, not just, hey, we're nice. And so it was— it felt good that we were able to do that. It's literally your brain is functioning better when you're in a positive place.
That's really interesting. So in looking over your social media over the last few days in preparation for today's talk, And I always— I just generally follow you because you're a very interesting follow. And you do a LinkedIn Live show, which we'll talk about in a minute, which is great too for everyone. You can— everyone in business can take away something from that LinkedIn weekly show, I think it is. But you refer to the word resilience a lot in your social media. In your work context, what does resilience mean?
Resilience is about the ability to see a challenge as something to overcome versus something that's going to take you out, and it's the ability to sort of bounce back and build from that challenge. And, you know, it's a— it's also something that's studied in positive psychology and really where the research lies, and it's a positive skill if there's resilience in the people within an organization. That's a good skill to have. It means they can manage their stress better. It means, again, they're making better decisions, they're more innovative, they're more productive. And same with divorce. You know, resilience is an important aspect to having a successful divorce, if that's a phrase.
And we also, in divorce world, we often talk about resilience in terms of our children. Yep. Children, we need them to be resilient because this world is, you know, only getting harder for them. in their futures. But, you know, divorce can teach kids how to be resilient or the need for resilience. Yeah. But, you know, the manner that their parents go through the process and choose, you know, to, you know, play it out is how their resilience could be tested negatively, potentially.
Yeah.
You know, with a drawn-out process and all that.
So how do you get into the world? How do you apply— you've mentioned psychology a few times. I mean, Is that part of your background? How do you get into your sort of service?
Yeah, you know, positive psychology is something of interest to me. I'm not a psychologist, but a couple things. One is I got into the work that I do because of working with someone who was a bully. I started getting my master's degree at the time and really studied— I was sort of fascinated by this person, so I started studying their behavior and then decided to create a business around solving bullying and toxic environments. And over time, really became interested in the opposite of that behavior, which is civility and inclusivity. And positive psychology just sort of naturally fell into part of that. And when you're at work and feeling abused, that's certainly going to take you down, right? And so I have become very interested in why some people are more affected or not able to overcome bullying or harassment while others are able to get past it and, and kind of like, okay, I got through that. I'm a better person because of it. And so a lot of positive psychology informs what I do.
Does bullying exist in the workplace mainly from like superior to inferior, like, you know, boss to employee?
Yeah, most of the time. So it's not like normally on the same levels?
It can be. So about 80% of the time it's a boss bullying a subordinate. In my situation, we were both directors, so we were peers. And sometimes it can actually go the other direction. It can be an employee bullying a boss. But most of the time it is, you know, a power play and it's a boss bullying a subordinate.
Yeah, I mean, I was bullied once at my, at my first job out of law school. And man, it can really change you. I mean, it can make it very difficult. And it has nothing to do with motivation, at least in my case. Like, it wasn't about making me better. It was literally just about picking on me.
Yeah, yeah. People engage in bullying for 2 reasons. One is that they really live in hyper-anxiety and fear around incompetence. So what that means is if they felt that you were well-liked or really good at your job, that threatens their ability to be competent. The other option is that if you make a mistake or maybe they just for whatever reason perceive you as someone who's not as good as them, Then, then that's also sparked up. So that's the first piece. And then secondly, they have no emotional— Emotional and social intelligence, right? So they lack— And that's why people engage in bullying behavior. So I kind of joke that they're Let's, let's continue.
What sort of businesses in terms of like size, industry can benefit from you and how do they, how would someone reach you?
Yep. So we work with all industries of all shapes and sizes. Where there's people, there's drama. So it doesn't matter the size of the industry. We've been in many places and you can find me anywhere. You could Google me, hit me up on LinkedIn, go to my website, which is civilitypartners.com. I am all over the place. So cool.
And in ProVisors.
And in ProVisors, indeed.
Yeah, well, thank you so much for, uh, joining me for a few minutes. I mean, Workplace Bowling is a, you know, uh, you work in a very interesting space, and I'm sure you do a lot of good for a lot of people, so, and businesses.
Well, thank you. I'm back at you.
All right, we'll see you guys soon. Scott Levin, Chief Peacekeeper. Continue to Look out for some more videos coming soon.
