Often the ways that we became managers, the ways that we
became leaders is by being really good problem solvers.
But the reality is what people want in these moments is
somebody to listen to and acknowledge them.
One of my favorite quotes is people don't care how much, you
know, until they know how much you care.
Just letting them know. I care.
I hear you. I acknowledge that you're going
through something hard. Is often the most helpful thing
that we can do, especially for people who are Our leaders, When
leaders in particular people that are viewed as being in
positions of authority, are supportive and show people that
they're believed. It really makes a tremendous
difference in their healing. Hey everyone, my name is Henry
Surya we Robin. And you're listening to the
technology, you know, podcast the show where I'll be bringing
you the greatest technical leaders practitioners and
thought leaders in the industry to discuss about their Journey
ideas and practices that we all can learn and apply to build a
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personal work. So let's dive into our Journal.
Logan to all of you, my friends and my listeners, welcome to the
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Actually you know that death / Patron, my guest for today's
episode is Catherine Manning Katherine is the president of
black but DC and the author of The empathetic workplace.
In this episode we discussed how leaders can deal with traumatic
experience in the workplace. Catherine describe what she
means by workplace trauma and explain the impact of such
trauma on employees performance and organizations productivity.
She shared the importance of leaders show.
Showing trust whenever employees come forward and share their
trauma. And why leaders should avoid
problem solving in response to their situation.
Catherine also touch on the importance of empathy and gave a
few tips on how we can be more empathetic towards others and
towards the end Catherine shared, her framework called the
laser method. The five steps we can do for a
more compassionate, calm, and confident response to the
workplace drama. I really enjoyed my conversation
with Kathryn personally, I've experienced a few cases of
employees having workplace trauma, when I was the manager
or the leader, and even cases when the employee had a severe
depression and suicidal thoughts.
And in most of those situations, I was never trained on how to
deal with the situation compassionately and
empathetically. So this episode is my attempt to
share a great way to educate ourselves on how to deal with
such workplace trauma and learning from.
From Catherine, someone who is highly experienced in.
This is something that I really appreciate.
And if you also find this episode useful, please help,
share it with more people. So I can reach out to many more
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Also, leave this podcast of 5 star rating and review on Apple
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Hello everyone. Welcome back to another new
episode of the package, on our podcast today, I have with me a
guest named Katherine Manning, she is an author to see
published a book titled, the empathetic workplace, five steps
to compassionate, calm and confident response to trauma on
the job. So based on this This book, we
will be talking a lot about how to handle traumatic situations
in the workplace for this traumatic experience or maybe
later on. We will discuss about that and I
think this topic has become much more important and it's also
personal to me. Because at my workplace, I have
to handle these kind of situations.
So I find many leaders probably are not equipped to handle this
kind of situations. And I find this important to
have this conversation so that we can learn at least the
basics, how to handle that. And then also, maybe avoid or
reduce the stress that we have. Deal with when dealing with such
situation. So Catherine, thank you so much
for this opportunity. Really looking forward for this
conversation. Me to thank you Henry.
It's such a pleasure to be here. So Catherine before we start
with the conversation about traumatic experience in the
workplace. Maybe if you can introduce
yourself. Maybe telling more about your
career Journey, any highlights or turning points.
Absolutely, I'm a lawyer and have spent most of my career
working with Crime Victims. I started when I was in.
College working at the local Domestic Violence Shelter.
As a volunteer, I did domestic violence and Rape Crisis,
Hotline work for many years. And then after I went to law
school, I ended up at the US Department of Justice where I
was a senior attorney advisor on victim rights.
And what that meant was, I would advise the department on how it
worked with victims in a wide array of cases.
Anything for my huge fraud case to terrorism to child
exploitation. And one of the things I began to
notice This was that everybody needed the same kinds of things.
It wasn't like the way that you would support an identity theft
victim was wildly, different than the way you would support a
human trafficking victim. Everybody needed to feel heard
and acknowledged everybody needed referrals to support.
And then I began to realize that it wasn't just the victims in
our cases, who needed those things.
If I had a co-worker for instance, who had a father who
was dying, or maybe a boss, who was abusive Or an ex-boyfriend
who was maybe stalking her. Those were situations where I
realized I was pulling on the same skills that I had used to
support Crime Victims. It made me realize that these
issues are not only in the criminal justice system, people
are dealing with traumas, all the time in the workplace, it's
just often, we don't talk about it.
One of the things I also began to realize was that while it can
be difficult and unnerving when somebody comes to you in the
midst of a crisis. There's really just some basic
things that we need to do to support them.
We don't have to become their therapist, we shouldn't become
their therapist. It's really just what can we do
to help them get through that moment?
I think of it as almost like the CPR skills.
Like you see the problem, you give them immediate support and
then you send them on to the experts to get more of what they
need. So I began realizing that there
were these overlaps in what kinds of support people needed.
And started thinking through what What I would say those
supports were and that's when I really began working on my book.
It was honestly the me to movement in 2018 that made me
start to think a lot about how these issues came up outside of
Criminal Justice, and how a lot of workplaces were dealing with
them in some ways, though I've got to admit, I was frustrated
by me too because I felt like me to put so much on survivors to
come forward, and share their story.
Everybody needs to hear your story, but without an
understanding that when somebody shares their story.
Whew. You have an obligation to really
listen and provide support in a compassionate and empathetic
way. So that's what really propelled
me to start thinking about. What would you say, people
should do in that moment? And that was when I came up with
this idea of really five steps that people should take when
somebody comes to them in that moment of trauma or distress.
So, I left the justice department in 2019 and that was
when I launched my company Blackbird and started working on
the book. Now, it's funny Henry publishing
takes a really long time, right? It takes about 2 years from when
you sell a book to when it actually gets published.
And in that time is when we had Global pandemic, huge economic
uncertainty, lots of racial violence here in the u.s., at
least I know around the world as well.
The beginning of the book is all these statistics to help people
understand how you should know, there's trauma in the workplace.
But what I found now is I almost don't need to tell people that
because it has been So clear over the last few years, almost
everybody has been touched in some way through the different
crises that we've been facing. So what has been, I think
fortuitous is the timing that people are really needing this
just because it's been so clear. But the reality is that these
traumas have always been in our workplace and always will be.
So what I really hope is that organizations will take this
moment and recognize that they have to develop these skills
that To help them get through this moment and also be prepared
for whatever else is coming down the lane.
Thank you so much for sharing your story.
First of all, I think I really need to appreciate your effort
in writing this book because I think it's not easy to deal in
such situations. Then you have dealt with so many
difficult, traumatic experience. Things like, even Boston
Marathon bombing the me to movement.
And what are the terrorism that you have to deal with, right?
So, having someone who is an expert in dealing with this and
giving us the basics, the advice.
It's how we can actually deal with such situations.
I think it's going to be really helpful.
So really thankful for your effort in writing the book, we
have been talking about the traumatic experience.
So for people who are probably associating trauma with
something like a childhood past trauma, or fear, maybe you can
clarify a little bit. What do you mean by traumatic
experience at the workplace? Absolutely.
The definition of trauma that I use is a very practical one and
focused on the work that I do and just trauma in the
workplace. So what I use is a somewhat
slimmed down version of the definition of Trauma from the
u.s. samsa substance, abuse mental, health, services,
Administration, and that definition is a psychological
injury that affects performance. So just to unpack that a little
bit, there are other definitions of trauma where they look at a
list of events. And they say, trauma is when you
experienced one of these events. I don't like using that
definition. And because we are all so
different and we can respond so differently to the same event.
Just speaking personally, when my father passed away, I was in
my late twenties and at the time, I was working at a big Law
Firm. I took maybe a day off and then
I came back to work and all day long.
People were coming up to me and saying, oh my gosh, I'm so
sorry, this is so awful. I can't even believe you're
here, please go home. You must be devastated.
The reality is I hadn't seen my father in many years.
He's not The person who raised me and I had a wonderful
childhood but not with him. While it was sad that he died.
I didn't feel that sense of Devastation that maybe somebody
who had lost a parent, who raised them might have felt.
So for me all of those expressions of oh I'm so sorry,
just made me feel kind of bad and like I was reacting wrong.
So I think the key is just to see the person in front of you
and what they need and not judge based on what they've
experienced whether you think they are in trauma.
Just We analyze what it is that the person in front of you is
going through and do they need support and then the other piece
of it is, it's an injury that affects your performance.
This is the workplace. So we don't need managers going
in and sitting down and saying, oh my gosh, so I understand
you've been through something really difficult.
Why don't you tell me about it again?
You're not the therapist. The issue is, is this something
that's affecting you and your ability to do the things that
you want to do? Are you struggling to keep up
with your deadlines to pay? Attention and meetings, are you
having difficulty managing your workload and the ways that you
want to be at work? Maybe it's affecting your
communication for instance that's another common thing that
can happen. People are maybe more short
tempered for instance. So what we're looking for, are
those kinds of traumas that are affecting people's ability to
perform in the way that they need to perform in the
workplace. And those are the issues that we
want to figure out how to address in a supportive way so
that people can continue to thrive and do their jobs.
Well, I really like your simple definition.
So it's like a psychological injury that affect performance.
Psychological injury means, I could be anything that affect,
maybe mental health, and mental well-being.
So, I guess these days. We experience a lot of
situations, be it from pandemic, economical situations like
inflation, High interest rates and layoffs, massive, layoffs
happening in the past few weeks and you quoted in the book.
If we work with people, we are actually working with people in
trauma. So like, everyone, One has this
kind of a traumatic experience. I think nobody these days have
been immune to such situation, right?
I think everyone has their own story and I think it's very
important to quote some statistics, which you also
quoted in the book. So I will just read it here.
The percentage of those who suffer from anxiety is
increasing at an alarming Pace. Especially these days,
particularly young people and suicide rates has also gone up
30% and recently. Yeah, we also have gone through
pandemic situations, which might affect a lot of families.
So I think that this This is definitely real and we have to
be able to somehow cope with it. So you mentioned things about
affecting performance. Maybe, for managers, who
probably know, there are people who are not performing based on
their capability, what will be some impact that you can start
noticing? Where the people has trauma?
I think some of the things that managers should be looking out
for our changes and people's behavior.
I remember, I spoke once with a CEO who told me about one of
their top Performers. It was a guy who was the head of
sales for the organization and he had always been somebody that
they could rely on. He was really kind of part of
the backbone of the company and then one day his performance,
just fell off a cliff started showing up late, missing
deadlines, zoning out and meetings where he normally would
have been very engaged. And on top of things, he was
really gone. The CEO recounted to me that
they were thinking, they had to fire him because they thought we
can't have somebody in this position.
Who is not up to the task. This is a really important role.
But finally, they said, well, maybe we should just talk to him
and see what he has to say for himself when they had that
conversation. The man disclosed that his wife
was dying and he hadn't wanted to bring it up because he
thought it wasn't appropriate to talk about that kind of thing in
the workplace but once they knew that they were able to get some
supports around him. The other thing that was amazing
is even before those supports were in place the man's formants
completely turned around. The reason for that is there was
so much stress, right? He's already got the stress of
the job and they can't take that away.
There's the stress of his wife dying and they can't take that
away. But then on top of that, there's
this third, kind of stress, which is the stress about what
is work going to say about the fact that I'm struggling with
this issue and they were able to take that away.
And because they took away that third source of stress, he was
really able to focus on the first two and that really
affected This performance immediately.
So I think that's the main thing is noticing changes in
somebody's behavior of suddenly they are much less engaged.
They're taking a lot of days off.
Sometimes people will tell you and that's really helpful when
they do, but if they are not doing it, it can be worthwhile
to just do a quick check-in. So maybe you have a regular
staff meeting and you notice gosh, James is not really
participating, you know, normally he's like laughing with
everybody. Else.
And I'm offering up suggestions or questions, and he barely said
a word this time, so then maybe just quickly afterward like, hey
James, just wanted to check in and see how things are going.
I noticed you were a little quiet in that meeting.
Now that can do a few really good things.
One is, it shows him that you care and gives him an
opportunity. If maybe like this guy who was
the head of sales, he feels uncomfortable talking about
something afraid that maybe people don't want to hear it.
You've kind of opened that door and allowed.
Them to express it. If you wants to even if he
doesn't want to, he now knows that you are somebody that he
could go to whenever he is ready, if he gets there.
And then finally one of the most fascinating pieces of research
that I came across in the last year, showed that even where
James is fine, it's still helpful to ask that question,
they trust you more, they feel closer to you when you're
willing to ask that question or you doing, okay?
Okay, even if they are even if they were totally fine, there's
nothing wrong. And he's like, I just was up
late playing video games. I'm just a little tired today.
Just that question, really builds, trust in particular
where it's a manager asking it, that really demonstrates two
people, that you are a trustworthy person, a leader
that they want to rely on. So it's a really, really helpful
thing to do, even where you're wrong.
So I think for managers out there, who probably notice your
people behaving differently first, Maybe it's a loss of
productivity. Second is there not much
involved as they are used to? So you call this absenteeism and
also maybe if they are thinking of quitting or maybe they're
just not performing as what they used to do before that.
So I think you also touch on an important Point sometimes when
people are in a stressful situations, not just stress with
the workload stress about personal but they also stressed.
How can I share this situations that are dealing with?
Because sometimes they don't have trust or they don't know if
they share something. Whether it's Someone will have a
bad stigma about you telling that story so I think having the
trust, I mean the go-to person to share this information.
I think it's also very important and that's why when you say
about check-in or just asking the person hey are you doing
okay? I think that also builds trust,
right? So maybe if you can share a
little bit more about this trust how can a manager shows that
they are trustworthy for people who are in this situation?
Is there any kind of tips that you want to share with us?
Absolutely. First and foremost, Is make sure
that you respond well when people do come forward.
So when somebody has that conversation of my spouse is
very ill that kind of conversation.
And hey, I just want you to know, I might be taking more
time off in the coming weeks, a few things are one how you
respond in the moment and that's the five steps to that of
response to trauma on the job. So make sure that you are
responding in an empathetic way in that moment that's going to
help both that individual. But also Everybody else that is
observing this. Some people are going to talk
about it with their colleagues and friends, you know.
Hey listen, he was really really great.
There was a guy that I worked with at the justice department,
whose job was investigating crimes on a Native American
reservation when he first took the job.
They said to him oh like every now and then you'll get
something serious like a fight when a salt but for the most
part it's like speeding and drunken disorderly.
There's really nothing much going on.
Maybe once in a really long time you get something like a sexual
assault. One of the first things he did
was investigate a cold case. We're really old one that had
been unsolved, a claimed sexual assault.
He talked to the victim, he talked to everybody, he could
find any Witnesses, he gathered as much information as he could.
Ultimately, he said, I can't do anything about this.
It's too old. There's no way to prosecute it,
but he explained that to the victim.
Here's why I can't, you know, if anything else comes up, Please
let me know. I'm still open to it but just
understand, here's everything we've done.
And I'm so sorry for what you went through and we're not going
to be able to take it forward that year.
He had seven sexual assault trials after them telling him
you're not going to have any for like maybe one in seven years.
He had seven in one year and the reason was because that victim
went and told all her friends, he is trustworthy.
He is willing to take you seriously, he will listen to you
and he will provide you support Work through this process.
So it's like everybody came out of the woodwork once they knew
that he was somebody that they could trust.
I think the same thing happens in the workplace when somebody
comes forward with. I feel a little uncomfortable
about the way that person talks. He's using language, that makes
me uncomfortable. If you take that seriously and
you acknowledge, yes, I hear what you're saying and I'm sorry
about that and let's figure out what we can do that moment where
you're taking. It seriously, is going to have
Ripple effects. It's through the entire team
because now other people will be willing to share their stories
with you as well. And you'll uncover a lot of the
challenges. And I know sometimes people say,
well, I don't necessarily want to hear all this stuff but the
reality is, those issues are happening whether you know about
them or not and they're already affecting your engagement,
productivity creativity, all of the things on your team are
already being affected by those unresolved on talked about
issues so much better to bring. Them out in the open where they
can be dealt with the goal is not a quiet morning, it's a
healthy team, so that's one as make sure you're responding.
Well, when people come forward, the other thing is have supports
available and talk about them a lot.
A lot of teams have done, just amazing things in the recent
years, in terms of coming up with great ways to support
people who are struggling everything from mental health
days to miscarriage. Leave to transgender Our medical
support or providing mental health resources, that are
culturally specific. So if you want somebody of your
own cultural background to talk to, you can get it, there's just
been some incredible things that people have done and that's
amazing but they're only helpful if people know about them, if
you have a fantastic policy to support people who are
experiencing violence in their intimate relationship, that's
only going to be helpful if the people who need it know that
it's there. And so you have to talk about it
widely because you have no idea who needs it.
And you have to talk about it, repeatedly because you may
mention it, the first time it comes out and maybe there's
somebody on your team. Who at the time doesn't need it.
It goes right over her head. She's not paying any attention.
But then two years later, boy, she really needs that.
So if you've only mentioned it the one time, she's not going to
even be aware. So you have to make sure that
you were talking about these supports widely and Repeatedly.
And then the final thing, I think in terms of leaders making
it clear that it's okay to talk about these issues, as you kind
of have to walk the walk, you have to be willing to talk about
these issues yourself. I have a friend who is the head
of Ethics at Walmart, giant global company.
Fortune. Number one company in the world.
She is a black woman and she had an experience where she was
traveling for the company to do an investigation.
And she flew into this other City, very late at night.
She went to check in and the person gave her the room and she
went up to the room and it was terrible like dripping and the
corner wallpaper peeling, it was really musty like just gross and
so, she went back down to the front desk and said, you know,
this room is in really awful shape.
Is there any other room available in the hotel?
And the man at the front desk said, no, this is the very last
room that we have and she thought, well, that's kind of
strange. It's not like that crowd.
At a city, and it's a weeknight, but okay, fine.
So she went she spent a very uncomfortable night, they're
leaving early the next morning to go to her meetings, as she
was walking out. She noticed that there was a
black woman at the front desk and she thought, just going to
ask. So she went and she said where
you all full last night and the woman said, no, we had plenty of
rooms available, my friend said ah yeah.
Interesting because I was told that you didn't the woman said,
well what room were you put in? And she told her and woman said,
oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, that's awful.
No we had plenty of Their places and she said, so, who was it?
Who told you that we were fall? And my friend described the man,
and she said that's our manager, he's the head of the hotel.
So my friend just thought, well, this is just something that
happens, you know, she certainly experienced a lot of racism in
her life. It wasn't something that she was
going to allow to kind of knock her off.
Her game all day and she just kind of filed it away.
It wasn't something that she really thought about, but then a
couple weeks later she was talking to her boss and he said
to her, gosh I've just Has found out that some of our Associates
feel uncomfortable in certain cities and she said, because of
their race and she said, well, it's not a surprise and here's
something that happened to me and he said, I'm so horrified
that happened to you. That is awful, he instantly went
and put that hotel on their, do not stay at company-wide like
that hotel is off the list. They are not allowed to stay
there anymore. He'd called the manager and told
him why, and he asked my friend, would you be willing to share
your story? A big call with all of our
people who do these investigations around the world.
And she said, sure, yeah, I'd be happy to.
Now, think about the difference that makes when you have the
person who is the head of ethics for the entire company.
Saying, not only it's important to bring these issues forward.
We want you to talk about bias that you're experiencing.
It's important to say that, right?
We want to hear about it, but then think about the impact when
she's able to say I've experienced bias myself.
And when I told the company about it, here's what they did.
That's going to have so much more power than just saying it
alone. It's one thing to say, oh we
have great Mental Health Resources available in the
company and they're free and they're confidential.
It's another thing to say, we have great Mental Health
Resources available in the company, they're free, they're
confidential and they really helped me when I needed it.
So this is the, I think crucial piece of leadership is
recognizing that it's not enough.
Just to tell other people that Okay, we have to be willing to
model that ourselves. Thank you for sharing such great
examples stories from the real world.
And how much impact it made if we handle these kind of
situations. Well, so especially for managers
or I think we are not trained, maybe in the school, maybe in
the University or in a previous workplace, but sometimes when it
happened, we got struggling. Like, okay.
How should I deal with this? And I think your first tips is
actually to respond. Well, if you see this kind of
traumatic experience in the workplace, I think that's for
me. Manager, right?
Because sometimes there are managers who want to avoid
difficult conversations or difficult situation, simply
because he had a, just never navigate that before.
And I think the first tips here is like, try to respond.
Well, ignoring the problem will not make things better.
The person themselves will probably not get better by
themselves. So having that options for the
managers to talk with the person will actually help and I think
one other important thing is that you mentioned the manager
is not there to be like a psychiatrist or psychologist.
Help fix the problem. So maybe tell us more about this
because some man I just want to be a problem solver, right?
They always want to find Solutions but maybe this is not
a good idea in this situation. So maybe tell us more how
managers should react not as a problem solver?
Yeah, absolutely. It is tempting often the ways
that we became managers the ways that we became leaders is by
being really good problem, solvers.
And so we have learned to do it almost instinctively.
So somebody comes in and says I have a problem.
Problem and your brain is instantly going to, how do I
solve this, or at least reframe it.
So it seems a little better but the reality is what people want
in these moments is somebody to listen to and acknowledge them.
So when somebody comes to you and says, for instance, my
spouse is very sick. Yes, it's important that they
understand about leave. That's available to them before
you get there and sharing that you first have to let them know
that you heard them. So just say something.
Like I'm so sorry or thanks for letting me know or that sounds
really hard. So just something that shows
them that you heard them and it's incredible.
Henry, I hope that people do try this because you can almost
watch it happen like their shoulders will drop.
You just see the sense of calm come over them like, oh good,
you heard me. One of my favorite quotes is
people don't care how much, you know, until they know how much
you care. Just letting them know.
I care. I hear you.
I acknowledge that you're going through something hard.
Is often the most helpful thing that we can do.
Especially I would say for people who are leaders When
leaders in particular people that are viewed, as being in
positions of authority, are supportive and show people that
they're believed, it really makes a tremendous difference in
their healing. So, thanks for sharing this.
I was myself trying to be a problem solver when people came
with this kind of situation, I must also say it's a wrong
thing, don't do that consciously.
So purse is this listen acknowledge if you have some
tips some support maybe you can share but yeah, don't try to
solve their problems because some of these probably are
difficult and maybe only professionals are able to help.
So we don't want to worsen the situation as well by giving the
wrong tips or words is like triggering their emotions
further, they will spiral to the real situation.
So, thanks for sharing these tips, your title of the book
actually mentioned about empathetic workplace.
So the key word here, Here is empathy, what kind of things are
probably would suggest to managers here to actually
improve their empathy because I think one of the most important
skills when handling, this situation is actually to have
empathy. So maybe if you can share a
little bit more about empathy. Absolutely.
So one of the things I think is so essential to empathy is
curiosity, just a willingness to observe and get curious about
what's going on. So imagine you're in your
regular staff meeting and you ask David.
About a project that he's working on but you notice as
soon as David starts talking Jill and Jessica look at each
other like just notice that and then curious, right?
Like, I wonder why what's going on there?
Maybe it's just one of them has a crush on him or something
completely irrelevant. Or maybe it's that one of them
is actually the one doing the work that David is taking credit
for or one of them is frustrated that that she was supposed to be
on the team, doing it and David is cutting her out or maybe it's
that, they know that David is lying to you about.
What he's saying that he's gotten done on this project
already. Just notice that and get
curious. So I think that's one of the
keys for any kind of managers. And any kind of leadership
position is just being willing to watch what's going on around
you. You can practice that in
non-work situations, go out to a restaurant and just observe a
Sitting at the next table and notice who does a lot of the
talking and who doesn't notice. One of the kids is really acting
out and get curious about why maybe she's jealous of her
brother about something just start to observe behaviors of
people around you and get curious about what's going on.
And then the next thing is take the step of asking, so you've
observed this is what's going on in the meetings.
So now is a good time to maybe follow up with Jessica or Jill
and ask an open-ended question, just one-on-one, maybe at a
weekly check-in, or something like that.
Or an easy conversation? Hey, Jill, I noticed in the
staff meeting when David started, talking, you and
Jessica were kind of looking at each other.
I just wanted to see. Is there anything going on?
What's going on with that? Just open ended question.
And then, listen and listen to understand, not to tell them why
they're wrong or explain how to solve the problem.
Just listen to understand. So I feel like if you can just
work on those few skills, just practice them over the next
couple of weeks. Observe, and then ask and listen
other things that can be really helpful, I think, for leaders,
in terms of building up, empathy are to educate yourself.
All of us have teams filled with people who have very different
backgrounds from our own. We don't know much about the
life experiences of the people that we are working with
everyday. So another good thing to do is
start to educate yourself. If there's somebody on your team
for instance who has a disability that you don't know
much about learn a little bit about it.
There's lots of great information.
Everything from TV shows to movie is to podcast blog posts,
a million different ways to learn more.
So educate yourself a little bit about different backgrounds and
experiences just so you can know a little bit about it.
Maybe somebody is of a religion that you don't know much about.
That's something that happened on.
One of my teams, there was a woman who was of a religion
where they didn't Liberate holidays.
I mean, I worried about this for longer than I should have.
I usually gave people Presence at the end of the year and I
thought, what do I do, like, do I not give her a present?
But give everybody else one which seems offensive or do I
give her one even though I know she doesn't celebrate a holiday
and like, maybe that's the offensive thing.
So, I've really struggled with this for so long.
I finally did a little bit of research on it, but it didn't
feel like it gave me the answer. So then the key was I just went
and asked her and I said Ed. Hey listen, this is my usual
practice. I don't know what would be
appropriate for you. How would you like me to handle
it? And she said, well, if it's a
Christmas present, I don't want that.
But if it's just a gift to acknowledge, all the work that
I've done over the year, well that would certainly be welcome
and I thought that's not that hard.
I don't know why I was so hard for me to think of that but I
feel like I'm so glad that she was able to tell me that that
year, you know, I gave plants out.
Some people got a red one. If they celebrated Christmas and
people Out of Blue Ribbon. If they celebrated Hanukkah, she
just got a white ribbon and a general.
Thank you note. It was not hard to do, but I had
to be willing to ask and learn. So I think that's the final key
in terms of empathy is just make the effort to really try to
understand people and not just their cultural backgrounds
either. Learn about what sports, they're
into, what are they do? In their spare time, have easy
connection conversations just learn about who they are.
Those little connections that we make over just silly things.
Like oh you like cats are you like crossword?
Puzzles those little silly connections can help so much in
particular later on when something is challenging.
You know you're going to have to have hard conversation with
somebody. If you have that solid
foundation of a lot of easygoing conversations already, it'll
make the harder ones a lot easier to thank you for sharing
your funny story on how to deal with the situation.
So I think the last part here, educate yourself is really
important because nowadays, we work in a remote team set up.
Maybe people with a lot of diversity, right?
Be it, cultural religion, sexual orientation, whatever that is.
So I think sometimes if we haven't experienced it really
clueless, sometimes you can research on the Internet or even
ask you person about it. I just want to add one more
thing also maybe to empathize with ourselves, right?
So when you talk about, observing, maybe sometimes you
can also observe our own behavior.
Things like our breath, our five senses, which I like when you
mention in the book, seeing whether you actually also
experiencing the same kind of stressful, situation or Bernard,
Maybe you also need help yourself and talk to somebody
who can probably help you. Maybe let's go to the important
thing that you mention in the book, the laser method, the five
steps to deal with this situation.
So maybe if you can explain what is laser method, so greatly.
So as I mentioned earlier, I had this moment of frustration back
in 2018, where I thought we are asking all of these survivors to
share their stories as part of me too, but not recognizing that
you have to respond in a certain way.
When somebody shares a story with you.
So that's really what got me thinking about how I think
people should respond. I came up with an acronym for it
in part because I spent so many years in government, I just
think in acronyms at this point, but also partly, because I know,
as you were just talking about Henry, when somebody comes to
you, with something heavy, you know, they're in a crisis, it's
stressful like it causes us to, maybe feel a little bit
elevated. I'm afraid.
I'm not going to handle it, right?
I don't know what to do so it can be helpful.
Able to have just a little guidepost to follow.
And I will say, I have had a lot of Glock in particular with
people in the tech space responding really well.
I spoke with this guy once he's a chief technology officer and
he's probably in his early 30s. And he said, you know, I've
never dealt with any trauma in my life.
He's like, I'm still married. My parents are still married.
I haven't even had a like significant break up.
My grandparents are still alive. Like I've had like no trauma in
my life, but He was doing, he had this great project where he
had developed an algorithm that could search out new stories
about anti-asian hate here in the US, which is really Sky
rocketing through the pandemic. What he was doing was reaching
out, he would find the victims and he would send them an email
and say, I understand you've been the victim of this horrific
crime and there are supports available.
If you want Reach Out, here's how to reach me and I'll share
them with you but he thought, I don't know how to have those
conversations. I don't know what to do.
To do. So we talked about it and talked
him through laser e, read the book and he called me about a
month later. And he said, you know, I got to
tell you, I reached out to somebody who had been a victim
of a hate crime. The neighbor had been driving by
her house and spraying paint gun at it.
So, it was this real feeling of not safe in her own home.
Her neighbors are attacking her. I mean, that's a really scary
awful feeling and he said, he talked to her for about an hour
and he walked through the laser Take with her, he said at the
end of it, she said, you know, I've spoken to the police and
prosecutors have talked to journalists and nobody has made
me feel heard and understood like you did, he was so proud of
himself, and I was proud of him to what an amazing thing, right?
I've raised this just to say, if you follow it, it really does
work. And it's not that hard.
So I'll talk you through it now. So, step, one of laser is listen
what I say with listening is its active listening, so it's not
just Just be quiet and let the person talk, it's create the
circumstances where the person feels comfortable opening up.
One way to do. That is ask questions.
Ask open-ended questions, how are you doing?
Where did you go next? What's Happening Now?
Open ended questions? Let people know that we want to
hear from them and then you don't just sit there silently.
Of course you nod. You say, aha?
Yes, you encourage them to go on another.
One of my favorite active, listening techniques is looping,
which is where you just say back.
A few of the words that the person just said, so maybe they
say, I'm just so angry about everything.
My father is going through right now and you say gosh, you must
be so angry about everything. Your father is going through
right now. It sounds like a trick.
You're literally just mimicking, the same words back but in my
experience people are like, ah, yes.
Finally, somebody understands me.
I think the key is that we're using the exact same words.
So angry is a little different than frustrated or upset when we
use their words, we Demonstrate. First of all, that we're
listening because we couldn't use their words if we weren't
but it's also really validating. Another thing to remember, as
you talked about a little bit earlier is, as we are listening,
we have to be managing our own response sometimes when we are
in that stressful moment of gosh, I don't know if I'm going
to be able to support this person or what they're talking
about is really hard and I feel scared for them or sad for them
or angry for them. We start to have our own
emotional reactions. We just have to be mindful of
that. Keep breathing.
Through it. Another technique that I really
like is engage one of your five senses.
So notice the smell of coffee in the Next Room or look around the
room and count a few, you know, three blue things that you see
or put your hand on the desk in front of you and notice, is it
feels smooth or rough. One of those techniques can
really ground you in the present moment and help you feel a
little bit calmer as you're hearing that story helps you to
stay present. So that was all step.
One step two is acknowledge we talked about About this a little
bit earlier, but it's this idea that when they finish talking,
you know, it's great that you've been listening the whole time
and that's really important but they also need to feel heard.
That's like a second piece of it is making sure they feel heard
that can be just a simple statement of.
Thank you for letting me know that and I'm sorry for
everything you're going through. The key is to avoid statements
that either deny or distract from what they've shared with
you. So it denial is something like
oh I'm sure it's all going to be fine or it's probably not as
bad. Does she think a distraction is
something like oh a friend of mine, went through something
similar. So let me tell you about what he
did and how he was just fine. A distraction can also be well
really you just need to focus on your kids right now or you have
to make sure you're taking care of yourself.
What are you doing to take care of yourself?
Those are all maybe important things to share down the line.
It may be great to talk with them about how they're taking
care of themselves. But in that moment, what they
mostly need is just to feel her. Heard.
So make sure you don't skip that step because I will say, every
time I've seen one of these conversations start to go badly,
it's been because the person needs more acknowledgement, so
acknowledge what they've shared and then the third step is share
information. This can be any information you
have about the incident. If this is something for
instance, like an incident of workplace violence, people are
going to have a lot of questions about what happened who was
involved, but the police been called, they're going to be a
lot of questions. So you can share any information
that you have. That's a great thing to share
sometimes though, you don't have any information to share this
person coming to you is the first time you've heard anything
about this. There's still other types of
information you can share so you can share process information.
Here's what happens next. Here's Who's involved in these
types of Investigations, you can share values information.
So things like our organization takes employee safety, very
seriously. Ali.
We have no tolerance for bullying at our school, that
kind of statement of value statement can be very helpful as
well. And then finally even sharing
what you don't know, but hope to learn.
So say I don't actually know how these complaints are handled but
I'll find out and get back to you when you admit that you
don't know the answer it actually builds trust.
It shows that you're somebody who's not going to pretend that
you know, more than you do. So even sharing that you don't
know, the answer can be helpful and then the fourth step is
Empower, the step is about recognizing that this person is
going to go on after this conversation and they have a
whole path ahead of them of their own healing from this
incident or experience. We can't walk that path for
them. We have to recognize that
they're going to go on, they're going to take the steps that
they need for healing. We can't take that away from
them, but we can give them some tools to take with them.
And those tools can be some of the things we talked about
earlier, like having mental health, supports around having a
lie. Leave policy for domestic.
Violence is a great thing to have.
So letting people know that there are supports out there and
then letting them decide whether to access them, it can be
tempting. Particularly if you are a
variable thetic person or a real problem, solver to say not just
here is the support out there, but also let me set up that
appointment for you and then make sure that you went in fact,
I'll drive you to the appointment.
That just try to put a rein on that.
Remember your goal? Just to give them tools and let
them decide what steps they want to take on their own.
That's why it's called Empower, you're giving them those tools
and let them take those steps themselves and then the final
step is return. So, we've done, listen
acknowledge, share Empower, and now we're on return and return
is really. It's kind of two facets of it.
The first is literally returning to the person to check in and
let them know that you're still a resource answer.
Any additional questions. I actually like to Under that
because you'll forget even if you think this was such an
important conversation, of course, I won't forget
everything he's going through. You will you get busy?
We all get busy. So, I will just put it on my
calendar, two weeks as Circle back.
I do see, be James Ray. What's going on with his dad?
And then, I just send them a quick email, or text or message.
Letting him know I'm thinking of him.
Hope everything's okay with this dad.
Let me know if there's anything I can do.
So, just quick check-in, it really means a lot to people.
And then finally returning to Yourself recognizing that.
This is hard. There have been a lot of
Statistics lately on leadership fatigue.
That leading through this time has been really hard and taken a
toll on people. And part of that, I think comes
from the fact that we're trying so hard to support people or
teams through these. Really challenging experiences
we have to take care of ourselves along the way or we're
not going to be any good for anybody else, who needs us.
So my best advice on that and this is speaking as somebody
who's not always been very Good at self care.
I think that you should try to have a daily reset to something
that you do every day. That's just about taking care of
you burnout, compassion. Fatigue is one of those things
that sneaks up on you over time. So it's one of those areas where
the best defense is a good offense.
You have to affirmatively protect yourself from burnout.
So a daily reset could be something like going for a walk
everyday at lunch or playing the piano for 30 minutes after
dinner or saying Prayer. Before you go to bed, just
something that you do that's just a little reset for yourself
every day. Another great one is gratitude
listing three things that you're grateful for every morning can
be a good one. So just something that you do
every day that's just for you. The second thing is lean on
others, just right now I would challenge you.
Can you think of five people that you could call when you're
having a bad day? And then once you have your
five, remember to reach out to them, I think we often worried
that we're burdening people when we reach out And share the
things that were struggling with.
But I imagine that the people that you've named are not people
that if they called you, you would feel like, oh, what a
burden he is for calling me, you'd be grateful, right?
And so recognize that they feel the same way about you calling
them finally, know your warning sign.
So by that, I mean the signs that you're beginning to suffer
from burnout. Those can be things like you're
a little bit more short, tempered than normal may be a
little bit more sarcastic. I've gotta admit Henry, one of
my I start swearing more. I'm not somebody who swears very
often. So, if suddenly, I start
sounding like a sailor, I know that like, oh, there's something
going on with me. Another one is the things that
normally are fun for you. Start to feel like a burden.
So normally, maybe you're somebody who really enjoys
cooking or drawing or anything if suddenly, that starts to feel
like another thing on my to-do list, that's often a sign that
you're beginning to suffer from burnout.
And when you notice Those signs that's an indication that you
need to double down on those first two, so, recommit to your
self-care and then also reach out to others for support.
Well, thank you for such comprehensive walkthrough of the
laser method. So let me just repeat one more
time. Laser stands for listen,
acknowledge share and power and return.
So I just want to mention also another thing, right?
So for people who are not in the probably Authority situation,
even by listening and acknowledging when maybe appears
or friends, Trying to tell about their traumatic experience can
actually be helpful while sharing power and maybe return,
right? Sometimes when you are in a
place of authority, you can have more options to help these
people, and for example, creating a policy to help these
people. So I think listening
acknowledging all those sounds simple, but it's actually very
difficult, and it's actually very useful to the person who
convey their traumatic experience.
So I just want to make sure that people know about this.
Listen acknowledge it is really important and I really love when
you mention at the end about written, so many Many things
that you mentioned about daily reset, and things like that.
I think the job of a manager or leader these days have become
really challenging, maybe in the fuuka world having to deal with
so many kind of disruption people issues as well.
So, I think leadership fatigue, or you also mentioned in your
book compassion fatigue, having to be able to always show
compassion. It's actually really difficult.
So, I think the key here is always have a daily reset.
Try to also feel, you know, acknowledge what you're going
through and find the support. Don't forget.
That leaders also our And we need support sometimes as well.
So don't forget about that. We are not always have to be
tough. So Catherine it's been a really
Pleasant conversation really love this.
I hope people also get a lot of tips and advice how to deal with
this situation because I'm sure one day us leaders will face
this situation. Although, maybe the challenge,
or the level will be different. Yes, everyone will have to go
through this before I let you go.
Actually, I have one last question which I always ask to
all my guests, so this is something called three technical
leadership is Um, but, I mean, we can forget about the
techniques, so maybe Catherine, if you can share your tree
version of leadership wisdom for people to learn from you.
Absolutely. So, you know, with my background
of course, it's going to be focused on trauma.
So mine is number one recognize that people that you're working
with are dealing with challenges that you may have no idea about
number to know that the way that you support them through that
challenge, can have a long-lasting impact on their
cool well-being and also on the health of your team and then
finally take the steps to support them and always to
support yourself as well as your doing.
So. Wow, really beautiful.
Thanks for sharing this wisdom. Very, very concise, but it's
really meaningful. So, Catherine, if people want to
learn more about you or maybe for like this composition, is
there a place where they can reach out or find you online?
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm probably most active on
LinkedIn and it's just Catherine.
Manning Catherine is spelled katherine1965 allay our int so
LinkedIn. Please reach out.
I would love to connect with people there.
You can also go to Catherine, Manning.com.
Cam and see all of the different ways to get in touch with me
through my website. Sure, I'll make sure to have
that in the show notes as well. So Catherine, thank you so much
for your time, really love this conversation and I hope it can
help so many leaders out there who are faced with this
situation. So, thanks again for that.
Thank you. Thank you for listening to this
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