12 230913 What Should We Expect From a Work Environment?

12:56AM Oct 25, 2023

Speakers:

Meredith Holley

Megan Goering Mellin

Keywords:

workplace

loud talker

expectations

people

experience

boundary violation

person

environment

feel

touching

protect

volume

dynamic

love

power

walk

places

respect

tigers

called

Today we're going to talk about expectations. What should we expect from a work environment? As we dive into this topic, we will cover the ground between level setting and inventorying our expectations so that we can be more empowered in dealing with moments when those expectations turn out to differ from our experience of reality. Where it is, we come into workplaces with all kinds of expectations, often thinking that we don't have any at all. Where do expectations come from? And can you give us an example of some expectations? You've found yourself bringing in a different working environment? Yeah,

totally. So I, I see people, people often come to me, especially when I'm doing mediations and they say, all I'm asking for is to be treated with respect, all I'm asking for is to be treated with decency, just common sense is all I'm looking for. But what they mean, about what common sense is what they mean about respect what they mean about decency, or any or like, just, what seems to them as obvious is not obvious to the other person participating in the experience. And a lot of times this could be justified. So for example, I think like a lot of people don't want to be interrupted at work. That's a common trigger. A lot of people don't want to be touched at work. A lot of people don't appreciate raised volume, in voices at work. However, a lot of times we aren't aware of when we're doing those things. So some people at work don't want to be touched. Other people think of themselves as huggers. And think of touching as really supportive. Some people don't appreciate raised volume at work, other people are think of themselves as being enthusiastic and engaged. And as passionate people and raised volume is part of who they are. Any of these things, you can see people like interruption, I interrupt people a lot. And I'm more conscious of it now than I used to be. But for me, I want to move conversation along, I want things to go quickly. And so I tend to start speaking, not realizing that the other person hasn't finished speaking. And so I think any of these things, probably most of them come from our family dynamics growing up, they come from the education system that we were in, growing up, they can come from TV that we watch, they can come from different cultural values. And most but the main point is that most of them come from good places, most of them they come from, from places of our own values and our own experiences in life.

So we get expectations from all over the place. I'm with you on that family dynamics. Basically, it's any place where these stories get created in our mind, right of like, not only what's important, but that second layer you spoke to of what it looks like when that is being upheld, versus what it looks like when it's being transgressed. I don't know if anybody out? Oh, yeah, go no, go ahead. I was gonna say I don't know if anybody out there is a high school debate nerd if that is in anybody else's like cultural milieu, from the 90s, early 2000s. But in high school debate in the national forensics league in Kansas, where I grew up, there was this term called a bright line. And either a situation had a bright line, or it didn't have a bright line. And so I think one of the things that you are pointing to that's very juicy here is like, well, of course, I need Respect in the workplace. But the bright line around respect, not only might not be clear, it might not be the same for you and the person next to you who both want respect. But one of you comes from a family of 20 really loud people who show their respect and love by being all up in each other's faces, and kind of nosy and asking questions and reflecting that they know what's going on in your life. And then the next person who comes from a much more serene, or kind of solitude oriented environment, may feel like what respect looks like is staying out of my business and focusing on your own work so that I have space to maintain my own area in the workplace. Each one of them might realize they have expectations around respect, but what respect looks like can be different from person A to person B,

we have that in the law, too. It's not just in debate in the law, they talk about a bright line rule versus like a rule that's open for discretion or interpretation. And I think that that's that's exactly right. I think that there are some workplaces that I've seen where people work with a vulnerable population. For example, work with people with disabilities, children and elderly people who are designated as vulnerable populations. And a lot of times those workspaces have much more written down behavioral expectations about what is what can happen in the workplace. So I've worked with organizations before to help them create an affirmative consent policy, for example, where there have been issues around like they they've worked with vulnerable populations. And they're, they know that there's additional liability for non consensual touching. And so they also work with that with employees of just saying, Hey, can I give you a hug right now? Hey, are you open to me putting my hand on your shoulder with this? Can I touch you right now? Like I've even said to clients before, who've been really emotional, like I said, to a client the other day, can I touch your body right now? Because I just wanted to give her a hug. And she was like, yes.

She knew what she meant. Obviously, it wasn't like, Excuse me, context was? No, you were you were like, You were erring on the side of clarifying the intent, so that she had every room to be like, actually, I'm not requesting not okay, bodily contact at this time. Yeah, you had humor in it a bit too, in your, you know, immaculate Meredith way in that way. But giving her room to say, uh, no, right, because you have a client relationship. And like, as when you're in your, many of your roles there, there can be a power dynamic there. And that was, was addressed by this like kind of affirmative consent protocol, I'm hearing you say that workplaces really differ, and can, you know, can choose to differ even further if they want to, but workplaces really differ in the amount of clarity that they create from the outset, when we have something like a corporate value, or a legal commitment to quote unquote, safety or whatever. I don't think professionalism is a legal commitment. But they can have different levels of clarity on how much they say, this is what this looks like. This is what this doesn't look like.

And I think that we I think that that is a problem that happens quite frequently is that policies are not clear about what the actual behavior is that they're expecting or prohibiting. And so we say bullying is not allowed, we say professionalism is expected those things like but somebody will accuse another person of bullying. And the other person says, this is just how I show up. This is how my family dynamic was growing up, I'm not bullying, I'm being direct. Or a person will say this person is passive aggressively talking about me to co workers in a negative way. And the other person's like, No, you know, you were misbehaving. And so I was just, you know, trying to correct the situation like these dynamics, if we're not specific. It leaves a lot of room for honestly, like a lot of abuse and drama.

In the law, you said there were bright line things and then there was the other what's what's something in the law, that's not the bright line? It's like a discretionary, discretionary. Or I actually love this distinction. Like if I put myself like in my managers shoes, I'm like, Alright, if I'm a manager who's either new or very caring, right, like I really care about my workplace being a little bit less prone to intensity, or conflict around this kind of thing. That's one sort of spectrum I could look at is to what extent are we in brightline mode versus discretionary mode, when it comes to the expectations people will bring to the workplace. And then once they come, and they are, you know, we onboard them for the week, they will get a new sense, right after the first week, we have our first impression, we develop some expectations on site. So whether it's what employees are bringing in, or what we bring in as workers or what we form more first, their managers do or can play quieter role, I suppose any of us can. But managers, as when we're in those roles of managers, we can play a big role in helping create that bright line clarity, and places that might have historically been open to interpretation. And this is one of the areas where we can be proactive, right and creating inclusive work environments that are going to be low drama, so we can focus on what we want to contribute,

we can and also one of the I think that you can err on both ways, both sides, sometimes managers say every time they create a get a complaint, the behavior that was complained about needs to be prohibited. And that is not necessarily always the case. Sometimes you may want to say, unfortunately, I understand you're uncomfortable with this behavior, this behavior is allowed in this workplace. How can I support you in your experience of this, this is not a disciplinary? This is not going to be prohibited. This is not a disciplinary issue, but I want to be open to your experience about it and I want to give you supports around that. So for example, some people are very Very, very bothered and triggered by tardiness. Some workplaces will allow tardiness up to a point, right and allow flexible scheduling

like Facebook has like a five minute Grace grace period. Now, that wasn't the grace book. No. It's also meta now, but like meta as a tech company, and like a couple colleagues I have there who I sometimes meet, I don't work there. If they'll be like, Oh, I'm like, oh, sorry, I'm a few minutes late. And they're like, don't worry, we all have like a five minute grace period. It's just a norm. Yeah. And that's just what they do.

Yeah. And so one person may have a personal value of being 10 minutes early to everything, right. But other people may not get in trouble, even if that person is kept waiting on a zoom or kept waiting in a meeting, right? So there are certain things and some workplaces do incorporate touching and touching is necessary in the workplace. For example, nursing, involves a lot of touching people's bodies. And so you may say, like, you may have to create more nuanced policies around what's allowed and what is not allowed, right. And so it's not necessarily every time somebody is bothered, or every time somebody comes, I just had this old boss, who like even when he was talking at normal volume, you could hear him across the office with a closed door. Like he had the

loud talkers. This is this is a hot topic. It was just like,

he wasn't even talking, like his voice just carry, like, if you're in a room, you can be in a crowded room, you can hear him across the room, and he's not yelling, even talker. I get it. I'm a loud talker, too. So it didn't bother me. But I did have like, for some people that is very triggering. Understandably, no one was gonna say, Hey, this guy is now fired, because his voice carries like, that's not gonna happen. And then the next step is also to give folks who are very triggered supports around that. And you might not make a policy against loud talking, but you may make a policy against personal insults or against like accusations to a subordinate or against a supervisor not taking responsibility for a subordinates work product, you know, you can make other you can encounter it in other ways.

So I want to take this in a very specific direction that is just showing up for me as we do the lot loud talker situation. The other one that had kind of queued up in my mind, as we were exploring here is the tuna sandwich in the workplace, okay, like, some people are really not into fish. There's like a whole list of foods, that if we like, nobody wants to tuna fish sandwich, but also like both of those examples of loud talker I think when we start entering the tuna fish sandwich territory, it also brings up a lot of cultural, I was gonna say

it's not a tuna fish sandwich, it can be heard. Yeah,

it could be anything, right? It can, it could be vinegar on fish and chips, right? Choose your country, choose your culture,

um, but it's often food associated with

places that had access to spices and the spice Road, where it was a whole legacy of my usually was not the colonizers, right, who are like, I don't really like what's going on here. So that has, you know, places like this, we have dynamics of culture, dynamics, sometimes of race or racial isolation coming in. And it can become very unclear, especially if we started out in an environment that was not conscientious or cautious, or conscious of the bright line to, you know, intentional discretion spectrum. So, let's imagine the loud talker, let's imagine, um, I call it the tuna sandwich, and then we'll put the cultural piece on later because she was, you know, we're gonna neutralize it for just now, one of the things that I noticed with the loud talker is I kind of play this tape back about environments I've been in, it's sometimes it feels threatening to me, or it has felt threatening to me to walk up to the loud talker, and to say something like, I really don't like how loudly you're speaking, that feels scary. And what I noticed when I look at how I feel like I got trained to do behave, I almost got trained to behave, that it's safer for me to be like, You know what, that guy is really disrespectful of other people's needs in the workplace, but actually feels safer to me, the way I was trained to make the interpretation. And then frankly, to socialize or like socially test that interpretation with other people, aka gossip, right? And be like, I don't like how Jack was talking today. I really feel like he doesn't just you just can't do a vibe check around here, right? But this also can be how people especially I'm a white lady, right? How we as white people can create a toxic work environment, right? We don't go right to the person because it seems confrontational. So we do the nice white people think sometimes. And all of a sudden we start this other conversation, which 100% digresses from the mission of the business and the needs of the customers. So a question I have for you. Oh, that you know a lot about, you know a lot about neutralizing language. And so I would love to just say, you know, having coughed up my lesser instincts there on walking over to dentists or whoever we call them and being like, Dennis, I noticed I'm experiencing distress when I can't focus on my work, like, what would I even say, if I didn't want to provoke the gossip train, and I wanted to speak to Dennis to be responsible for my own experience.

So I think there are two important things there. One is that it is pretty different. If you're talking about I think there is a power dynamic that you're talking about there. And that I think needs to be called out. So it's one thing if you're talking about a supervisor who has a lot of privilege associated with their identity, and who also has power in the organization, versus if you're talking about a person who has characteristics that are marginalized in the workplace, or socially more and or socially marginalized. So I think as white ladies, it's like, if you're talking about Dennis, the white guy who goes golfing every weekend, who's also the, like, big boss, that's one thing that's a power dynamic, where we, where we as white ladies, as white subordinates have less power. If you're talking about the black woman who just got hired, and you're uncomfortable with her, that is a very different power dynamic. And I think that that's this base, where white women weaponize whiteness, and protect whiteness through talking about a person. So I think that it's two different things. If you're talking about how do you approach the person that is engaging in the behavior that is outside of what you expect for your workplace or outside of what you want to tolerate in your workplace. I think that's one thing. And then I think another thing is, like, taking a step back, and looking at the power dynamic, and where you fit in the social, financial, organizational hierarchy, and whether whether talking about it with other folks is seeking allies because you need support. Because there's a space there's a gap space where you don't have the you feel that there's a gap in the power that you have, versus weaponizing your own power against somebody else. So I think those are two different experiences that we engage in. The first step though with either I think is like loud volume and talking can be a boundary violation. Whenever we're talking about boundary violations, always, the first step is to come back to ourselves and say, What do I need right now? How do I take care of myself, you don't owe anybody communication around their boundary violation, you don't have to go to Dennis and correct his behavior, your duty to yourself is to be safe. And sometimes that means leaving that environment and it is okay. If somebody is violating your boundaries to leave that environment that goes back to the thing that we talked about about what if you get fired? What if you get disciplined for leaving? What if you what if there's a consequence for you for protecting yourself, and ultimately, for me, I had to come to the conclusion that my duty to myself comes above my fear of consequences for protecting myself. That's just a really important personal rule for me. So I'm willing to say, I'm going to leave this workspace if somebody keeps touching me, because for me, that is a boundary violation that I really care about, like I'm going to move away, I'm going to step away, I'm going to protect my body and for other people volume is that, but if you want to talk to the person, I think you can communicate to the person. And a couple ways to do that is to say, I'm standing right here, I can hear you. Like, like, you can lower your volume, we can all hear you and make it jokey like which I like to make it jokey. Another way you can that is more serious is volume really triggers me. Hmm. I would appreciate it if you would try to be conscious of your volume.

I love that. It because it's owning, you're owning your expectation there. You're owning your infrastructure, frankly, and like how you're wired. I also could see some in some spaces, you know, depending on where we all are in the media cycle, I feel like triggering can be its own trigger word, but I could see I could see seeing, you know, I notice raised volume really activates me. I feel like that one also would feel pretty neutral. And I wonder if you would be willing to meet me at a lower volume while we're standing here and if not all So we can figure out another arrangement. Like it's owned, and I've made a request, it's not a demand, and I'm not judging him or, you know,

everybody's dragging something. Yeah, everybody has their own language sort of, of how they say things. You can also say, like, I have trouble hearing people, when they're talking really loud, I'd appreciate if you lower your voice.

I love that, in some of our listeners may be familiar with a strain of therapy called internal family systems or ifs, it's associate with parts work, if you are not an ifs person, like give it a Google the framework is really interesting. But one of the things that that modality has involved in my experience is this practice of sitting with your own inner children, like specifically the ones that had been either exiled or who have been trying to protect you. And so they kind of walk you through this visualization, or I have walked through many of these visualizations where I'm holding a child, and we're like, really committed to listening to that aspect. But sometimes that aspect is losing its dang mind at that time, and you just can't be there, like, you can't get the message. And so there's this like, habit that I have gained, that's basically like, Can we ask this one to please turn down the volume because it's, we really want to be there. But we're not going to be able to be there, the volume is as high. And I feel like sometimes practicing relating with ourselves that way. And like making those gentle requests and acknowledging those needs in like our internal dialogue or with our own internal co workers, you know, can be one way to just become more familiar with making those soft requests.

And I think I always think about is it like, am I am I wanting to identify to this person that their behavior is a problem, or am I wanting to relate to them and build a relationship. And so, so sometimes you do want to say, Please lower your voice, and it is okay to be that direct, because you don't want to say I have this vulnerability with somebody. And that's like with somebody who's a true abuser, who you want to protect yourself around.

So many takeaways here. And I feel like we could have an entire, we could have a series even on expectations and how we navigate them. But one of the things that I want to mirror back and sort of pull the thread on so that we can go deeper in the future, or get people stories to share with us what you have experienced is around my big takeaway is around the loud talker. context matters. When it comes to our expectations, meeting tension in reality, I kind of am walking away with the impression that the workplace isn't a free space where we pretend that power dynamics don't exist. Actually, it's a place where, you know, especially in, in, in our privileges, right, and today, we're in our authorities or our places in the hiding place, we are in a hierarchical system, it makes sense to inventory, the powers that we hold, and to nuance our actions around our expectations with awareness of those power dynamics. And I think this, I love how you said, you know, there's power gathering in places where you have been marginalized or minoritized, in some way. But there's also weaponizing, the powers that you do have. So I think one of my top takeaways is that, you know, given the awareness that an expectation is violated, it is a really, really good time to step back. Do that boundary work and check in what do I need? How do I care for myself? Can I exit? Can I renew my commitment to supporting myself relocating my body even if it creates some adverse consequence? And then from a genuinely safe space, right, map some of those factors, okay, who's this person? What's this context? What would it like for my, what would it look like for my value to be served, so that I can choose to actually want to interact about this? Or do I just need a new kind of personal practice or policy of like, when it's tuna sandwich time and the cubicles, I will be going for a walk? Because that is what I'm doing when the lunch room when the work room becomes a lunch room? Maybe I relocate me.

I also only like to say, I think that I say this a lot to clients that sometimes we got a job and we think basically we got a job at a pet store. Petting kittens, and snuggling kittens. And that's how the job gets billed to us. Like we're a family things are wonderful here. You're just gonna be cuddling all day long and you're gonna love everyone. And the Nerf guns.

We have a kegerator on our couch. Everyone has unlimited paid time off for work the way we

write, we get set up with these expectations even during the hiring process. And then we go home, like the first day and we're like, oh, I have some like scratches on this is weird. I feel a little weird. And we talk to our partner friends and we're like, does this look like a scratch to you? And they're like I don't know. I mean, maybe it seems okay to me. And then things start getting worse and worse, and we're coming home bloody and like, you know what's happening. But when we talk to people about it, they're like, well, it sounded like a pet store to me like I think. And then eventually, we have to come to terms that we're working in a zoo and the Tiger Cage, we're not working at a pet store. And at that point, I think you have to put on protective armor, you have to use tools, you have to, you can't go into a Tiger Cage and pretend that it's a kitten basket anymore. And to me, that is setting and enforcing boundaries, it is saying, if a tiger is charging me, I will leave this environment and that is okay, because my duty is to protect myself. And I think, I think that some of it is acknowledging that you're experiencing harm. And you don't even have to identify a culprit for the harm, like no one's gonna be like, that tiger shouldn't have charged you like, that's what Tigers do. Maybe that's what our coworkers are gonna keep doing. But acknowledging that and acknowledging that we're having a trauma experience, or we have boundaries, we have experiences we don't want to tolerate in this workplace, I think is kind of the first step to saying, Okay, how do I put on some protective gear? How do I make sure the Tigers are cleared out of the cage before I go to clean, clean it, you know,

I love it. So it's not a PA and that I think that takes it to a whole a whole next level, because it's not just like stepping back, I'm looking at my expectations and what I might want to do around them, but it's also believing yourself, when you notice that there is a divergence or a misalignment between expectations and reality and continuing to look at the actual reality underneath the interpretation to be willing to say no, these like minor scratches are turning into deeper wounds here. I acknowledge the wounds, the wounds are part of the reality their reality demands attention, and I will attend to it. And I do not leave your own side to

Yeah, and I don't even have to label the tigers as bad. I don't have to have other people agree with me to know that they're tigers, like they're just staggering. And I need to protect myself. And so I think when there's that extreme level of like gaslighting abuse, like

this representation, almost of like the working environment and happens a lot in industries.

Yeah, yeah. Then I think like the most important thing is our own safety. Yeah,

we always come back there. Tell us what you think about this. Share with us your stories or your challenges, or your lessons learned or the lessons you wish you had known earlier. Around expectations, Meredith that people have an expert or people have an expectation to share. If people have a story to share or an experience around expectations to share where can they reach out to us,

they can go to Aris resolution.com/story It's er ay s resolution.com/story.

Thank you so much for joining us today and we look forward to connecting again and next time on empowered communication