Negativity At Work And How To Address It (Question from a fan)

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Reality-Based Leadership Podcast, where I join Alex Doerr. He's our VP of People Evolution. And of course, you know hopefully who I am by now. I'm Sy Wakeman. Hopefully you know both of us by now. And we are so excited to take a question on this podcast. And we really encourage people to submit questions. And you can do that. You can either go to info@sywakeman.com. It might look like a speaker's form, like you want to hire us, but there's a free free flow information. You can just send in your questions, and you can also sign up for our newsletter, realitybasedleadership.com/newsletter. And once you're getting those, you can respond to that newsletter, and we would love to hear from you— ideas for next newsletters, or questions you'd like us to answer on the podcast, or, you know, just even like, you know, kudos, this newsletter was helpful. The more we can have dialogue out there, and also, you know, connect with us on LinkedIn— and, and you don't get a 24-hour response on some of these things, but know we are listening. So we love to take questions. Alex and I are always out, you know, we get a lot of questions in person because both he and I are out presenting, and also virtually. So we try and keep track of questions we think would be representative of more than just the individual that asked them. And so you'll hear us on a lot of our podcasts say, you know, here's something we're hearing a lot lately. We're not making that up. We're starting to see Not starting to, but we're seeing trends in the workplace and trying to bring them to you. But the coolest way to apply some of what we're teaching is with real-life examples. Like, here's a situation. And that's why when we do our programming, a lot of people want to hire us for a keynote. We love doing those. They want to hire us for a training session. We have found the best practice is multiple training sessions, you know, 3 to 7, followed by— Group sessions. Group coaching. Hey, I tried it, I have a question. And, and then also some toolkit sessions where people go out, use the tool for business value, and then we can highlight those for other folks. So if you're interested in our work or, and/or sustainability, it's a lot more than just a keynote. I'm so surprised by people that ask me, like, you know, who would you recommend to come in and talk more about these topics? And I'm like, We talk more about these topics, but I know we're well known for, we do awesome keynotes, but there's also a whole way through that. So anyway, this was a great question that came in, and I think that unpacking it will help other folks kind of think about their way through the world differently. So obviously I keep what you send me anonymous, and a lot of times I can kind of figure out where it comes from because I'm talking to many of you. But I think it's a common experience. So this person is in healthcare and they are part of a group that has a residency program for nurses. And so what we're trying to do in residency programs is help people make that transition from their incredible training to working in healthcare. And so we include residents in a lot of places they might not get access to before. So we might have monthly programming, we might have them joining our meetings with their colleagues and leaders. And, and it really is not just looking at how do you do your job well, but how do you enter into the profession of nursing and really get odds of becoming a great nurse. And nurses don't just do patient care. They are involved in the research, and they are involved in service and continuous improvement, and they're involved in training. other nurses. And a lot of times nurses want to carve things down to like, I'm just going to clock in, see my patients, clock out. And they think that's how they're going to conserve their energy. They think like, but it's an energy cycle. See, I can't just serve my patients well if I'm not excited and my nose is in the research, or I understand maybe my part in the research is compliance to evidence-based practice. If I'm not out there working on improving, if I just complain about staffing and Instead of being part of a governance structure that works on benchmarking great staffing. And also, if I'm just gonna complain about people newly trained and not be part of being part of their learning experience, like the energy cycle, if you're not involved wholeheartedly in a lot of it, it doesn't mean overworking or working for free. You can do this with good boundaries. It just means that there's a broader place of nursing. So that's why we do residency programs is we're hoping To welcome people not to their jobs, that's called onboarding, but to their profession. That's called residency programs, to where you get to learn how to be a nurse. And your job is where you get to learn how to do this type of nursing. So to help some of you leaders out there who are frustrated that people are like, why do we have to come to this meeting? That's how you broaden the view of that meeting. But enough, I'm rambling here, Alex. Well, I'll get to the question. You can jump in. It said, um, hello, Sai and friends. I'm curious to know if any of recommendations you would have for conquering some negativity that's coming from our current nurse residency group. And we've got some nurses, they have 12 months or less experience, so it tells me they're onboarding into the residency program, that join us monthly for focused education and team-building sessions to help them transition into practice, not to do their current job. And they go on to say, we've got some pockets of nurses who have some negativity that is contagious to others. And I love this I love that the question is so clean. It isn't like, oh my gosh, everybody who enters the profession of nursing now in their 20s isn't interested in nursing. It's, it's a request, not a complaint. Mm-hmm. But they said their negativity is contagious to others. They're not seeing value of the program they're in and in general are negative toward anything in the program, even negative to free snacks and ice creams provided to them. I feel that some of this may be generational. probably don't necessarily agree with that. I would appreciate any suggestions or feedback you have. And, you know, they just go on to say that they're really enjoying and using, with some humor, a lot of the things that we're teaching. And so one, I love the question because it says, here's what I'm seeing and I wanna know what I can do to impact the situation. Mm-hmm. It doesn't tell me what they should be doing. So it's just a very nice clean question, but it has enough context that we can You know, really dig into this. So that's the question we're going to talk about, probably just for the next 15 minutes or so, but to give you an idea how your questions can become our podcast topics. So, um, I of course have some ideas with that. Um, Alex, do you want to make commentary towards that, or—

Yeah, I'll just kick it off. This reminds me, as we're doing one of these,

it's been a while since we've done a question because we've been focused on our topics, but I remember doing our Dear Cy process. We tried this where you'd write a longer letter about what's going on. And I love that you bring this one so clean and really just, here's what I'm noticing, love to help, here's some things in there. But some of those letters we did back at Dear Psy, I think we did 10 of them. And after about 7 episodes, we had to cancel it because the first thing you did was clean up the judgment and the assignments of motive and like the, you know, the kind of underhanded, you know, smacks that were in there. And it always got down to the facts. It was like, maybe go talk to this person. And this one's not like that. So I got me—

Isn't it kind of like that, Alex? Actually, it is kind of like that.

Just to clean up the stories. And it actually was like, not that we're oversimplifying, I know there's more to it, but it was like, it sounds like these 3 things— stop judging, start helping— and it might get you some more information. So I just wanted to— my first thought was, this is so clean, the question, because we've seen some doozies in the past.

Alex has a new book coming out called Why We— or How We Could. And it actually gives you a process for a call to greatness. Clean up the thinking because the ego likes to make things unfigureoutable. And once the thinking's clear, things become figureoutable and solvable. You get rid of the irrelevant information to the relevant. And then step 2, you find your space of impact, your part in the problem and the solution. And then 3 is, it's pretty clear what to do next, right action.

And you take that right action just with clean, and then you might find out more information, you know, so, but then it's the same process again because you might find the problem you thought was the problem wasn't really the problem as you, you know, interact with this group. But one thing that was weird that came to me, Sai, I didn't expect this as you read this, was this activity I like to do sometimes is like, what are 3 ways that feedback could be true? And I don't know why it went there. Usually that's not my first thing, but I was like, one thing I wrote down is, um, uh, there's some negativity towards the program, or they're not seeing the value in the program. And I don't know why, for me, I just am in this open spot right now. It's like, how might they be spot on? Now, I don't think that's the first thing if you're kind of set up the question that they're a little negative, could be a generational thing. And I'm not trying to defend anybody, but I just got my mind open to that as like, they got me thinking like, if what are the high accountables that are negative about the program? Like, is it, is it, is it not as helpful or is it not as welcoming or is— I was just trying to see like, is there any truth in that? I like that. It was really weird. And then the, the, um, I forgot what the other comment was. The, the, um, I just wrote down they're not seeing value in the program, but I thought there was one more comment there that I thought, what are 3 ways that could be true? Just to see if we haven't updated it in a while, or is it outdated, or is the group they're welcome to not the, like, most welcoming, kind, like, um, organized group? So it's, it's really, they're not getting a lot of value out of it. So I don't know, that's where my mind went, although I didn't think I'd start there. So, Sai, anything you'd add to—

No, I love that. That's a big part of it. Like, you know, there's, you know, the old adage, like, seek to understand before you seek to be understood. And so you're observing some behavior. But part of our feedback frame in Reality-Based Leadership, the first book, said, you know, go in with something very positive so that you remember these are very talented nursing professionals who you're glad to have in the system. So the first thing is like, me getting out of judging and into helping. But the feedback frame is you go in with something positive, like, I'm glad you're here and you have so much great recent modern training. We're so glad you picked our system. And then go into what's not working yet or what we'd like, you know, to do next. And so it's very hopeful. It's not personal. And then the third frame of the feedback frame is help me understand. And then the fourth frame is, um, You know, here's how this future could be cool, and you make the invitation. And so, if if I were in this leadership group, I would work hard to frame up the situation where we have people new in our residency program, and some of the ways I could interpret their behavior is either disengagement or critical about some elements of the program, and potentially that criticality. Criticalness or criticality or being critical is leeching over into, you know, some judgment and, and seeing people as, as so negative. So I love that this question came in, and I think that, you know, we know in our conflict model that if there is, you know, ambiguity in goals, Then that will that will lead to conflicts where people will see each other's jerks and idiots. And so I would love for you to welcome people into the program, and I think you need to get out of the group mentality where it's like you and then you meet with them. And I think I would just as people came into the residency program make sure that some really cool respected nurses in the profession, whether they be leaders or individual contributors or clinical educators or all of the above, did welcome them and that the onboarding wasn't just to their job, but that they really talked about the evidence-based value of residency programs and the goals of the program. Because once we are understanding goals, like I may be negative because I'm like, how is this helping me do my job when I basically am just, you know, on a team that puts in chest tubes? Like how? And I may be, because I'm not clear on the goal, be measuring it to a different barometer. And this isn't to argue about, but with good onboarding, you can help people at least broaden their perspective of what the purpose is and then open up a good discussion. Given that purpose, are there some things that we've got in the curriculum that you can see really helpful? And are there some things that you can give us input in how we could do that in a way that seems more relevant? Or, you know, so if everybody's like, well, we could do all of this online, go, you know what? Let's work on doing more of this online because I want to give you I also need to have some of our needs met that we really want people meeting you from lots of different areas. And we're investing heavily in you and we want you to feel really connected in so that you're not just saying, what can I do for you? And begging or borrowing, but you're saying, if this is the purpose of the program, let's look at how we can then put this together. And, you know, just like our negative brainstorming tool, when people come to us with issues, you know, with with concerns, we listen to those, but then we do what leaders do is we help to change those into risks. I mean, that concern is just a risk that we've now identified. And then we talk together about like, what's our strategy? And so you can collaborate and include not people in should we have to, but in let's look at the goal of this and let's look at some of the things that We think are important to that goal. And let's look at some of the things that you're saying just aren't reaching the mark. And that gets to your point, Alex, I really like, is, you know, how might this not reach the mark? The other thing when it comes to negativity is that is a call for individual coaching. I am negative when I'm overwhelmed or I'm flooded, and the only support I'm getting is from my group being negative. And so I think in the residency program, one of the things you might want to do is get people really involved with just kick-butt positive, um, people and have meeting— meaty, meaningful work, um, that they're doing in this residency program. And then now that that ground is set, my advice for you is to have individual conversations with people that really just say, hey, as your preceptor, I know you're coming in the field with amazing knowledge and skill set. And we're so happy you're here. And here's a couple things you're doing that's helping. And I need to let you know, here's a couple things you're doing that's hurting. And I need more helping, less hurting. Because a residency program where you just invite people into and then don't have coaching as part of that shaping how you're showing up, um, is, is a residency program where you're just trying to bring the United Nations together and hope they behave. And a residency program really is saying Not just that we're teaching about the organization, about the nursing profession. We're teaching you how to be a professional nurse. And that involves giving benefit of the doubt to our food service folks that they only had 2 types of ice cream and role modeling gratitude. You know, if we had a patient that acted like you, you'd be very frustrated. And I think talking to people about when they are bringing individualism in and when they're expected to be professionalism in. And a lot of times people don't know that the individualism, their opinion, isn't as welcome as their professionalism is, which is professional behavior plus expertise. And so this is all just helping people mature. And so a lot of the residency programs want to give the knowledge away, but they don't want to get involved in the maturing and the shaping of the person as they enter a profession. And nurses, I love your profession. It is so professional. And when people are not acting up to those professional standards that you've called up for yourself, it's nurse to nurse, peer to peer, arm around, come here, I want to call you up and love you up. I see greatness in you. And that call to greatness by anybody in their program is so important. One-on-one. And, and not preaching, just, you know, here's how I'd love to see you move through the world more differently. You've got mad skills. Now let's make sure you have great relationships.

I love that, Sai. So much good stuff there. The arm around and just sometimes that's all it takes is that one person to see greatness and clarify what's helping, what's hurting. Another thing I wrote down at the beginning of this was like, once you see that group, there's a little bit of like, Um, if you, if you have the skill set, you had the coaching, but some of it, I sometimes call it the dog bites. Like maybe one person is the alpha male or female that takes the group into negativity. Like a lot of times it's like one person. I just remember a lot of the college basketball teams I'm on, it was like, it would be, it could be a freshman with like NBA players, but for some reason this freshman could take the whole team into negativity, disastrous behavior, bad choices. And I'm like, why? Like that alpha, like what if someone else, we activate them to speak up and have an elevator speech when the negativity huddle started, or there was the meeting after the, or, you know, in the parking lot, if someone said, well, today was kind of just terrible, you know, it's like, what is your 15-second thing that you can say gently, not with a motive? It's like, actually, I got a lot out of talking to, you know, that individual about that part of the process today and just share one thing. And pretty soon, if you as an individual in that group and you have to coach, you know, someone to be that advocate, if you have a couple of elevator speeches, you can really be the one that keeps the group from going into that negativity. I know that's a little bit of a next step after one-on-one coaching, but it's those advocates to not collude in a weird way could help shift that, that, that entire energy of that, that cohort or that.

I think it's a good technique. In the book No Ego, we talk about activating the silent majority. And a lot of the times, if you have a few folks, you know, maybe that are involved in what might be labeled as negative behavior, we think we need to take them on. We do that privately with invitation. Yep. But the other thing you can do is activate the other people. And the key that most people don't wanna speak up is they don't wanna take on the negative person. And you don't take on the resistors. I don't think these are resistors, but you don't take them on. You just say, let me round out some data points. I'm finding this really beneficial because it anchors here for me. And you know, so you're just adding adjacent data points rather than trying to change or convince you know the resistor. And I think the key thing too is to make sure that we're not talking about these people behind their back. That we're people come in and they're stressed coming in, and a stress behavior is over. criticizing things. We see that many of our patients too, that they over-criticize because, you know, they're stressed. It's like the little kid in them is talking right now, acting like great authority. And I think all of us have to be careful who have been in the field a long time with revisionist history. So I'll never forget when I went back to a class reunion, I met up with 2 classmates, and I'll just call Kathy and Michelle. And the 2 classmates, I was so excited to see them because they had gone on to become amazing nurses. Like, one was a scientist researcher, and the other one was just amazing in maternal child welfare. And I was so excited to see them. They were excited to see me. And we hadn't seen each other for a long time. And they're like, Sai, it's so wild that we would have never thought you would become a teacher in nursing. Like, so many of the programs we see, like, you're out teaching nursing. And the reason they said that was so funny is because in the '80s, when we got career choices, We basically, like, the guidance counselor called us in and said, you're female, so you can be a secretary, a stay-at-home mom, a nurse, or a teacher. And I rejected all of them. Those are like our 4 options. I'm like, I'm going to go backpack in Europe until a few more options come up because like, I'm not going to be a teacher. And I have the empathy of a shoebox. Like, I'm not going to be a nurse and I'm not going to be a secretary. Like, all of these choices are just like Not my deal, right? And so we were all talking after we got these choices and about this, and so they were just joking with me, and I'm like, yeah, but you guys have become like amazing nurses. And they said, well, Sai, you're out there with all the young nurses, like they don't want to work, they didn't, you know, they came in this profession just for the money. And I'm like, I am out with all these nurses, and the ones I meet that just instead of a 2-year program have their BSN and they're going on for their, you know, nurse practitioner and their DNP, like Are we talking about the same people? And then they started to say, well, when we chose nursing, and they told these weird stories about, we saw a burning bush and God called us to the profession. And I had just taken a drink of like a $20 martini, which I spit out and wasted it because I was there when they made those choices. Not the case. They didn't want to be the other things. And so Susan said, I think I'll be a nurse. I don't like children. I think I'll be a nurse. She's the mother and child nurse today. She goes, I'm going to be a nurse. And Kathy said, well, we bought matching comforters for Christmas. I thought we were going to be roommates at college. So I guess I'll be a nurse too. Okay. That was the burning bush. That's how they chose their profession at age 18. So I said, how did you really choose to become great in nursing? Like you chose nursing to study. When did you really choose it? The researcher said, you know, I was not doing great at statistics. I was passing, but my professor, my faculty member, just really felt like I could do more. And so she kind of like threatened me. She said, you know what, if you don't get an A, I won't pass you because you're capable of more and you're only getting a C. And the only way you can get extra points to catch up now is work in my lab. Now, academic today, we're like, you should call the hotline. That's probably not the right Approach, like I was kind of horrified by the story. But what she said was she goes, you know, so I just said screw it. I'll work a couple of hours in her lab and just get through this. And guess whose research she carried on today? It was a professor saying, "I see greatness in you, and I'm not going to let you just walk through the world this way." And I think you'd be great on research. You're so bright and so talented. And she said it was that moment. That somebody said to me without threat and just said, "Hey, you can do better than this. Let me show you what this really looks like." Invited her in and said, "I see greatness in you." That's the key. It's not I see negativity in you; it's I see greatness in you. And invited them in. Second nurse, she said, "I never." I go, "I think it's funny that you work with moms and babies." And she's like, "Never once I think I would do." Maternal health rotation as my profession, and I said, "Well, when did you decide that?" And she goes, "You know, I was bedside with a mom. She had to round. You know, you in nursing, you round in all kinds of places." She said, "I was doing my round on labor and delivery, and I saw I was with a preceptor, and a mom had just lost two babies. She had twins; neither of them survived. And I was getting antsy because I had like a volleyball game or something, and she's like, 'Can we go now?' And that preceptor's like." It doesn't matter when your shift ends. You do not leave until we help this mom figure out how she goes home with no baby. Like, this is not the time where you just stay out of the mess. Like, our nursing job isn't just that we did what we could for those babies. We do what we can for the mom right now. And, and she encouraged her to stay. And it was in that moment she told a very heart-wrenching story about how she really saw her path To how she could make a difference, not only in supporting the mom, but this mom came from a minority population. This mom had little access to health. Like she caught on fire on saying, how do we get maternal health benefits to multiple populations? And and she said it just I caught on fire and had that nurse preceptor not said not how we do. You're great. And you can be greater, and not to do more work, not to abuse their well-being, not to. She just said this is a time it's important to stay, not go. And that's what I would end this question is what it brought up for me is what invitation are we making? You know, if you go back and you think you joined your job because you saw some burning bush from God, check that. The reason I'm in healthcare today. Is they were the ones who called back first. I had an application at the electric company. I had an application at a healthcare company in college. I worked on an HMO project for a med school. The reason I'm in healthcare today— now today I love it and I am all about advocating, but the reason I am is because I needed money and they were the first that called and I could get a paycheck the soonest. The reason I am who you all, you know, like the work of is because I had amazing people who I tell you impacted my life and called me up to greatness and challenged me and loved me up and called me up. So you're not doing this in this question. You're asking for help, but my help is don't critique these newbies coming in. Inspire, befriend, call up to greatness. Say a lot of don't do this, do that, and And, and so I would ask you as your assignment, when did you choose to be great in your profession and upon whose invitation? And now, are you making those same types of invitations? Who saw greatness in you and are you going out and seeing greatness in others? Because I think that's the key. I don't know what you have to add to that, Alex. I got on a bit of a tangent, but— No, no, no, no, no.

That's— no, thanks for sharing. Amazing. And I think, I think we're good there. So hopefully everybody enjoyed and, and thanks again.

You bet. Later.