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11 230913 Who Is Responsible For Creating Healthy Workplace Culture?: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

11 230913 Who Is Responsible For Creating Healthy Workplace Culture?

Meredith Holley26min

Megan Goering Mellin

00:04

Welcome back, where today we are going to discuss a topic I had been excited about for weeks. The question of responsibility, specifically, who is responsible for creating healthy workplace cultures? I am so excited to talk about this topic today. Because when a healthy workplace culture is there, everybody's happy. And when it's not there, we start pointing fingers. And some of us want to take sole responsibility for trying to see it through and make it work. And others of us really wish everybody else would be doing that, or someone specifically. And either way, sometimes it feels intractable, like what you want just doesn't matter. So I'm really excited to get your take on this today, Meredith. And I guess I just want to start out by asking, I'll just put it to you directly. Who is responsible for creating healthy workplace cultures?

Meredith Holley

00:56

I mean, I think it's both a more simple question. And a lot of times we think of and a more complicated question than we've been trained to deal with. Most of us live in workplaces work in workplaces, in organizations that have hierarchy built in. And so we say, okay, there's a certain amount of responsibility that this person who is the boss takes, there's a certain amount of responsibility, who, for a person who's a middle manager, there's a certain amount of responsibility who's just a day for the person who's just a day worker. And then we sort of expect workplaces to run with the boss taking overall responsibility, you know, and then down the hierarchy. In reality, I think that that's not how most workplaces play out. And I think a lot of us, especially those of us who have been socialized as women, are taught to take a certain amount of emotional responsibility for our workplace, some people are raised to take a certain amount of hard work responsibility staying late, you know, because of our socialization, we're individually trained to take more or less responsibility than what a simple hierarchy structures. The way that I look at it, though. And what simplifies it for me is that ultimately, I'm responsible for my career, and my career is worth doing hard things for some people really value their personal experience of life more than their careers. And so I think that like, you can also say that as I'm responsible for my life, I'm responsible for my feelings in my life, I'm responsible for my relationships, and for me, and how I show up. And sometimes that does spill over into choosing to take responsibility for other people and other other people's experiences in the workplace. But when I think about myself, being responsible for my career and my experience in life, I think that sometimes I'm willing to step up and take more responsibility for a healthy workplace culture in general, then if I am expecting someone, even someone who's assigned more responsibility than me to take responsibility for healthy workplace culture when they're not capable of it. Yeah. And

Megan Goering Mellin

03:21

they're, I think, when you say responsibility, you don't mean like blame or shouldering burden, or appointing yourself, the drill sergeant of whatever, or the governess of whatever aspect, you mean, more a sense of responsibility, which is like activating and claiming your own agency, and viewing yourself as a shaper of the environment who isn't just going to be acted upon. But it's also going to preserve your own space and authority to act, whether or not that authority comes directly from the hierarchy.

Meredith Holley

03:56

Yeah, I think that when we look at healthy workplace culture, that means different things to different people. So for example, I've been working with a couple of people recently, who both agree that they and this is in a mediation context, who both agree that they want the workplace to be a quiet, respectful place. It means really different things to these two people. I'm doing another mediation or I just finished one up, where two people agreed that a successful lobbying campaign is the ultimate goal, but meant really different things to them what the specifics of that looked like, right, so healthy, and so for one person in a recent mediation, health meant a healthy workplace experience meant really solid boundaries between work and personal life. Like I do not take my work home. I don't answer phones after 5pm I take I have very solid boundaries about work and personal life for the person in the same mediation, same ultimate work goals. The healthy workplace experience meant feeling emotional compassion, and immediate responsive support from people on his team. He was willing to talk to people late at night, if he felt it was supportive, you know, and it was very different ways to look at what healthy workplace culture looks like. And I think that there's a lot of really effective tools to look at, where both of those experiences are valid. Like I like to do a lot of personality tests and astrology and human design and look at who people really are in these spaces as unique individuals, but also how do we work together collectively. And so but I think that we have to know what one person experiences is healthy is different than what another person that experiences it's healthy. But when I think about it, this falls under the accountability pillar of empowered communication. And, and accountability is always math. It's always, what is the nameable label visible result that you're either getting or you're not getting. So how do you operationalize what health looks like in the workplace. And if I'm not getting what looks healthy, to me, what my experience of health is, how, what's the next action step I can take? What is the next way I can treat myself so that I can actually create that.

Megan Goering Mellin

06:30

I love that, I think that sometimes we get and I love the different views points on health. Even if we have the same words around a goal, you know, the way that we would measure that or assess that can be different and that can create, it can create some conflicts, you know, where you wouldn't necessarily expect it. I think the other thing you're speaking to here that is insightful, from my perspective is, sometimes when I hear the term responsibility, I get this sense of like moralistic, like, oh, it's better to be more responsible, or this thing that's like, either kind of good, you know, are you good girl, you're good worker better than worse and like, and it also tends to come with some shaming, like, if you are responsible, then great, but if you don't like your outcomes, maybe you should have been more responsible, which is actually very different than the way I hear you speaking about what it means to be responsible, which is more to count yourself in as an agent of action. Like when you talk about people being responsible for their boundaries on time and off time at work or being responsible for the team, maybe they are going to choose to be available after hours. In some situations. I'm hearing responsibility more as a matter of commitment, like what are we committed to have accountability? Like you said, that's our pillar, which is like the task separation, the task math, what are we doing? What are we not doing, and willingness to act? So kind of rolling that up to our question, like, who is responsible for healthy workplace cultures? This is less a matter of like, should you be being more responsible than you are, like, take a hard look and see if you're an unfit human? No, no, no, that's not we're talking about. But I think there is an opportunity here, where if you're in a hierarchy, and you know that hierarchy, you basically given the role to defer, right, like the deference to people higher in the hierarchy than you just because that's what the hierarchy and FERS doesn't mean that you can't claim for yourself. renewed commitment to the things that you care about the things you need renewed accountability, I'm willing to account for what I am allowing and not allowing, and then that willingness to act like you can take that for yourself.

Meredith Holley

08:45

Yeah, that's a really good point. I think that like, I mean, I think I like to think of like, I'm gonna get to the point here in a second, but it might be a little bit of a roundabout journey. So so. So I like to think of our bodies as like, the first animal that we're ever given to care for. And then, you know, we get a puppy maybe when we're a kid, and then that's the second animal that wherever, and then maybe we grow up and we have children, and we have another little body that we care for. And I think that in some ways, I think of responsibility as like creating that safe container for for at least ourselves to thrive, you know, at least our bodies to thrive, at least our souls to thrive. And like I'm responsible you and I both have dogs and so my dog's name is Pema and I am responsible for Pema, but I'm not like whoa, I better feed Pema today. I'm like, did I remember to feed her if she okay? What a cute little dog she deserves a treat and she gets a lot of choose in our house because I'm responsible to create a thriving to invite You're meant for perma. And so like, that's kind of how I think about it is like we have these little bodies that we've been given. We have pets that we've been given we have co workers we've been given. How do we create safe containers, at least for ourselves to thrive in?

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