This is the first episode of Unmanaged The Podcast.

(00:00:01):

Hi, I’m Elizabeth.

(00:00:02):

Welcome to Unmanaged Workplace Strategy.

(00:00:05):

This is going to be a little bit of a longer episode.

(00:00:07):

I’m testing out kind of moving to longer form podcasts,

(00:00:11):

so please let me know what you think after this episode.

(00:00:15):

I’d love to hear from you.

(00:00:18):

Today I want to tell you about a version of myself that I’m not embarrassed about anymore.

(00:00:24):

I’m not embarrassed to talk about it,

(00:00:26):

but it was a version of me that I spent a really long time not understanding.

(00:00:32):

And I’ll start my story here.

(00:00:35):

I was an HR director at a new organization.

(00:00:37):

The interviews had gone really well.

(00:00:40):

My boss seemed funny and kind.

(00:00:44):

My colleagues seemed affable and kind.

(00:00:48):

It was an organization that had been through a lot.

(00:00:53):

And from my interviews, what I heard was, we’re turning over a new leaf.

(00:00:58):

We want you to help drive the accountability,

(00:01:00):

the management,

(00:01:02):

training,

(00:01:02):

and all of that so that we can change the culture.

(00:01:06):

And I’m all up for a good transformation.

(00:01:10):

That’s one of my favorite things to do.

(00:01:13):

So I was all in on that.

(00:01:17):

Then a few months in,

(00:01:21):

I was in a meeting with my boss and we were just talking about HR stuff and another

(00:01:26):

director walked in and they were talking and then suddenly they were both yelling

(00:01:33):

and my boss was like slamming his hand on the table and the other guy was yelling

(00:01:41):

and he was yelling and then suddenly the other director said okay thanks and he

(00:01:47):

turned around and he walked out

(00:01:50):

and my boss turned back to me and said okay where were we like just like nothing

(00:01:55):

had ever happened I need a little bit more transition time than that to go from

(00:02:02):

yelling to regular conversation it was unbelievable I had never seen anything like

(00:02:10):

that before um

(00:02:13):

So it was off and I started noticing other things were off but I kept justifying

(00:02:19):

them so another time he told me how much he hated a specific employee and I thought

(00:02:27):

that is strange that he uses the word hate and that he says it so without regret I

(00:02:38):

hate this person and

(00:02:42):

I justified it in my head by saying, okay, well, I’m building trust with him.

(00:02:47):

So maybe this means that I can trust him.

(00:02:53):

Maybe this means that he trusts me.

(00:02:54):

And why I thought that justified it, I don’t know.

(00:02:59):

But that’s what I did in my head.

(00:03:03):

So another time he...

(00:03:08):

I was walking out to my car and he caught up with me and he was asking me about a

(00:03:13):

specific situation that had happened that day.

(00:03:16):

And I said, oh, you know, better late than never.

(00:03:18):

I don’t know.

(00:03:19):

It was something like that.

(00:03:22):

And he said, I am pissed.

(00:03:25):

And it was just the way he said it with a stoic face.

(00:03:29):

And, you know, I

(00:03:33):

Often try to break tension with humor.

(00:03:35):

And so I think I cracked some kind of a stupid joke.

(00:03:38):

Anyways, he didn’t say anything in return.

(00:03:42):

He just walked to his car and drove off.

(00:03:46):

Anyways, I started dreading his moods.

(00:03:49):

I never knew what version of him I was going to get.

(00:03:52):

Like,

(00:03:53):

are you going to be the brainstorming version or the two word answer version or the

(00:03:57):

volatile one?

(00:03:59):

The one that is silent and you just walk away.

(00:04:01):

Like, which one are you today?

(00:04:05):

So I overprepared.

(00:04:07):

I brought data.

(00:04:08):

I brought plans.

(00:04:09):

I brought structure.

(00:04:10):

And he would look at my work and literally toss it aside and tell me that I only

(00:04:17):

wanted to do the fun stuff.

(00:04:20):

And I’d heard him say that about other female leaders.

(00:04:22):

And to be clear, I don’t know that this is a gendered comment, but

(00:04:26):

And that was the only context in which I heard it.

(00:04:30):

He actually drew me a diagram to explain to me how I only wanted to do the fun stuff.

(00:04:38):

So he had three columns like ideas, approval slash implementation, and then fun stuff.

(00:04:47):

And he put this X in the fun stuff column and was like, this is where you want to start.

(00:04:55):

And he’s like,

(00:04:56):

you have to go all the way back to the beginning And I was like,

(00:05:00):

that’s what I gave you That’s what I handed you I handed you the plans,

(00:05:06):

the structure The risk analysis I handed that to you And it didn’t move him at all

(00:05:17):

He was just like,

(00:05:19):

you know,

(00:05:19):

you don’t get to work on the fun stuff yet Go back

(00:05:23):

and create a better, you know, time off request form or something like that.

(00:05:28):

Like he wanted me to do the manual work, even though I had a team that was doing it.

(00:05:37):

He felt that I should be completely entrenched in that.

(00:05:41):

So, okay.

(00:05:43):

But I started getting just really...

(00:05:46):

Nervous around him.

(00:05:47):

I would see him in the hallway and if he scowled,

(00:05:49):

then I would spin out and try to figure out what I did to cause it.

(00:05:55):

Every time I executed something and it got any type of negative feedback or

(00:06:00):

anything like that,

(00:06:01):

which is always standard,

(00:06:02):

right?

(00:06:02):

You’re always going to get feedback from people who don’t agree with what you did

(00:06:06):

and you can use that as data,

(00:06:09):

right?

(00:06:09):

And improve it and move forward.

(00:06:11):

But every time something happened like that, he would

(00:06:14):

Come and talk to me and say, remember when I told you this wasn’t going to work?

(00:06:18):

And look what happened.

(00:06:22):

Excuse me.

(00:06:24):

He would say, like, remember when you said this was a great idea and now we have this mess?

(00:06:31):

And it was always about one or two little things that didn’t go the way I had planned.

(00:06:36):

Things that were recoverable, easy to adjust to because things change.

(00:06:43):

Sorry I got a tickle in my throat there but anyways every single time I got

(00:06:48):

something negative feedback or even just like ways you could improve this he

(00:06:53):

decided that that meant that it was a failure and that he had been right all along.

(00:06:59):

So like a frog in boiling water I was slowly being destroyed by my environment

(00:07:06):

And the moment I finally noticed it was when I was in my office.

(00:07:12):

My boss had come to talk to me about something.

(00:07:14):

The door was shut, and he was pacing back and forth in front of the door.

(00:07:18):

Now, for anyone who’s been through traumatic experiences, that may trigger you.

(00:07:23):

It certainly triggered me.

(00:07:26):

Inside of me, I was screaming, I can’t get out.

(00:07:30):

Like, I need a path to exit.

(00:07:34):

But I couldn’t say anything because he was yelling and he was sneering at me,

(00:07:38):

which is something that I hadn’t experienced ever in a professional workplace.

(00:07:43):

But he actually said to me, blah, blah, blah, and then some other things.

(00:07:49):

But I had never experienced that in a workplace.

(00:07:56):

Was totally shocked and then he I asked him to leave and he yelled and sneered and

(00:08:02):

then slammed the door behind himself and that’s when I finally said to myself I

(00:08:09):

don’t think this is normal but by that point I was crying every day like people

(00:08:16):

would walk into my office and say how are you and I almost couldn’t stop myself

(00:08:21):

from crying like that’s how

(00:08:24):

It was constant brain fog.

(00:08:27):

I would go home,

(00:08:28):

maybe grab some crackers to eat for dinner and go straight to bed because I

(00:08:33):

couldn’t actually handle talking to my husband or anything else.

(00:08:40):

It was just too much.

(00:08:44):

It wasn’t until I left many months later that I could start to see what had

(00:08:50):

actually been happening.

(00:08:52):

And a really interesting thing happened when I left is my former colleagues started

(00:08:57):

reaching out and sharing their own experiences in the same workplace.

(00:09:03):

And hearing someone else’s story,

(00:09:06):

I started seeing the patterns that I had completely missed while I was inside of

(00:09:12):

that workplace.

(00:09:13):

The manipulation, the gaslighting, the way information had been used as a weapon.

(00:09:21):

I started kind of zooming out and looking at this as a big Jenga puzzle,

(00:09:29):

pulling out the bad pieces,

(00:09:30):

pulling out the noise,

(00:09:31):

right?

(00:09:32):

And what was left standing was the truth of what had happened.

(00:09:38):

And at the top of it was my competency,

(00:09:41):

my skills,

(00:09:42):

my track record,

(00:09:43):

the thank you notes from employees that I’d helped through hard situations,

(00:09:48):

the managers

(00:09:49):

who told me that their conversation with an employee was a success because of the

(00:09:54):

work that we had done together prior to the conversation.

(00:10:00):

I hadn’t failed, and the problem wasn’t my competence.

(00:10:04):

It was that I kept delivering messages that they didn’t want to hear.

(00:10:10):

So as an HR director, it’s my job to bring

(00:10:15):

Risk, People Risk Situations up, right?

(00:10:18):

And let them know, hey, this is a risk that is being created in this area.

(00:10:22):

You may want to do something about it.

(00:10:25):

And so I would do that as part of my job.

(00:10:28):

But whenever I had to report something about one of the executives,

(00:10:34):

my boss would take it personally,

(00:10:38):

like I had just called him a name.

(00:10:42):

And then he started asking me questions like,

(00:10:44):

whose side are you on,

(00:10:45):

the employee’s side or the manager’s side?

(00:10:49):

And I said, there isn’t a side.

(00:10:51):

The best way to support an organization is to support employees to be successful.

(00:10:57):

This is what I see as a risk.

(00:10:59):

This is problematic.

(00:11:00):

And if we don’t address it, it’s going to be a problem.

(00:11:08):

But I think their expectations of HR were much different from mine.

(00:11:13):

And in their minds,

(00:11:14):

I think HR is there to protect them,

(00:11:18):

not the business,

(00:11:18):

but protect them from getting in trouble and keeping the paperwork going.

(00:11:28):

That is what I could see clearly.

(00:11:32):

After I really went through the process of visualizing,

(00:11:37):

seeing it clearly,

(00:11:38):

structurally,

(00:11:39):

without the fog,

(00:11:40):

and it shifted everything for me.

(00:11:44):

I built Unmanaged because when I looked back at what had happened,

(00:11:49):

I could see exactly where I had lost myself.

(00:11:53):

The doubt I had internalized.

(00:11:55):

The endurance I had mistaken for professionalism.

(00:11:58):

The good faith that I extended to people who had not earned it.

(00:12:03):

And it was in fact dangerous for me to have faith in them.

(00:12:07):

The way I had personalized every mood, every slight, every slammed door.

(00:12:12):

And that just heavy burden of obligation that I felt I had to drive myself into the

(00:12:18):

floor to prove that I belonged there.

(00:12:22):

But I didn’t belong there.

(00:12:23):

And it’s not a character flaw, right?

(00:12:27):

Like these are patterns of behavior and they’re actually patterns of behavior that

(00:12:31):

are seen in workplaces all across this country.

(00:12:36):

You know,

(00:12:36):

the statistic of 80% of American employees identify as being in a toxic work

(00:12:42):

environment.

(00:12:43):

That’s a huge number.

(00:12:46):

And when I think about how I felt during that experience,

(00:12:51):

the despair,

(00:12:52):

the inability to take care of myself,

(00:12:56):

like exercise,

(00:12:57):

healthy food,

(00:12:58):

time with friends,

(00:12:59):

time with family.

(00:13:00):

No, like I was entirely consumed by

(00:13:04):

with this job and how I could meet expectations that were not designed for me to meet.

(00:13:15):

I became alarmed at imagining 80% of American employees feeling that same way.

(00:13:24):

Because what does that mean?

(00:13:27):

It means that you don’t have the time or bandwidth in your brain to critically

(00:13:33):

think through what’s happening.

(00:13:36):

And in the cultural environment that we find ourselves in now, like that is so scary to me.

(00:13:44):

If workplaces are negatively impacting people to that degree,

(00:13:49):

that they lose themselves,

(00:13:50):

they lose their values,

(00:13:52):

they lose everything that’s important to them.

(00:13:55):

What are we doing?

(00:13:59):

This is why workplace violence happens.

(00:14:03):

It’s why people get so frustrated at not being heard.

(00:14:10):

And the feeling of despair is just overwhelming.

(00:14:16):

That is really what got me thinking of how can we stop this?

(00:14:20):

How can we mitigate it?

(00:14:22):

And based on my experiences, it hasn’t been

(00:14:25):

Easy to get leaders to look at their own behavior and that’s often where the

(00:14:30):

toxicity starts right because the head of the organization often sets the tone for

(00:14:36):

the environment and for the culture so as I mapped out like what I had to unlearn

(00:14:44):

and what I learned then they kind of fell into the unmanaged pillars right so we

(00:14:48):

have 10 of them and

(00:14:52):

I started to see a structure where maybe we could start infusing these skills and

(00:14:59):

these abilities in our employee base across the country.

(00:15:05):

Critical thinking,

(00:15:06):

emotional intelligence,

(00:15:07):

nervous system regulation,

(00:15:09):

with what we’re learning about neuroplasticity and the ability to rewire our

(00:15:14):

brains.

(00:15:15):

I think it’s exciting.

(00:15:17):

We can train employees

(00:15:21):

We can train ourselves to regulate our nervous system,

(00:15:24):

to critically think through situations using emotional intelligence at work,

(00:15:29):

but also in the world,

(00:15:31):

with our families,

(00:15:32):

in our personal relationships,

(00:15:34):

because these are the things that successful strategies are built on because you

(00:15:41):

are separating the emotions from the facts and you’re moving forward in that way.

(00:15:49):

My revolutionary idea for Unmanaged is to get employees below the executive level

(00:15:58):

to identify where they’re losing themselves and turn it around so that they don’t

(00:16:03):

get to the point that I got to where I was completely lost.

(00:16:08):

That we start giving them these skills to start identifying the patterns while they’re in it.

(00:16:14):

so that they can not only protect themselves,

(00:16:16):

but when they leave that organization,

(00:16:19):

they can take what they learned and make it a better place,

(00:16:23):

their next place a better place.

(00:16:26):

It might be pie in the sky ideas,

(00:16:29):

but I feel like maybe we could use some pie in the sky ideas right now.

(00:16:34):

And so that’s why I built Unmanaged.

(00:16:37):

I hope that you all get something valuable from the resources that we have on our

(00:16:43):

website it’s unmanagedpeople.com please check it out and I’d love to hear from you

(00:16:49):

please send me an email send me feedback tell me what you’re struggling with I’d

(00:16:53):

love to hear from you and if you’d like to be a guest on my podcast please let me

(00:16:57):

know because I’d love to talk to people about their experiences and how they

(00:17:01):

overcame the damage that a toxic work environment did to them

(00:17:07):

I hope you have a great week.

(00:17:09):

We’ll talk to you later.

For more resources and information, please visit https://unmanagedpeople.com.

Download Free Tools

Watch Unmanaged on YouTube.

Listen to Unmanaged on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Book a free consultation.

Submit an anonymous question for Fridays Off the Record.

Contact Elizabeth.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit elizabetharnott1.substack.com