In this episode, Chris and Cortney talk about what relationships in a workplace with a focus on how you can deal with a difficult boss. They start my looking at the purpose of personality inventories and why they think the premise of EFT is a better fit when looking at working with others. Then they talk about how managing yourself is a start to helping you work through challenges that you might experience. At the end they go over some things to look for in a good employee and a good boss.
Tune in to see How to Deal with a Difficult Boss Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Listen for the following takeaways from the show:
- At the beginning of the show, one statement that stood out was that “People are a Complicated Creature”.
- A lot of business will use personality inventories to help manage the relationship.
- There is a Big 5 model that uses the following traits: extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience.
- Chris thinks personality inventories need to be looked at from the aspect of Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT).
- When dealing with difficult situations with their boss, they will blame the other person versus looking at themself.
- You can’t handle the other person, but you can manage yourself.
- One thing to look at is the tug-of-war of control.
- Chris runs down a list of some common workplace challenges that exist.
- There is a recent situation that involves a large US company is getting sued because of problems with a manager.
- Professionalism, or lack of, can be one the challenges.
- What makes for a Good Employee? A Good Boss?
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Episode #178 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to yet another edition of, Through a Therapist’s Eyes. We have Ms. Cortney Donelson with us back. I think you’re back because we screwed up last week. Right. So
Cortney Donelson: I am back from last week, but I’m back. Five months ago, right?
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, she was here last week. I just screwed up all the timing of everything.
That’s why we recorded on the Saturday instead of the normal day of Thursday. So I am Chris. Gazdik a mental health and substance abuse therapist since 1995, believed that or not got the book out, re understanding emotions and becoming your best self. We welcome you to, through a therapist’s eyes where you get to have personal insights from a therapist in your own car and in your own home and your own time and in your own way.
How [00:01:00] about that? This is not the delivery of therapy services in any way, though. You get to see the world through the lens of a therapist, give us a five star review. Guests, we’ll take four on apple, iTunes, Spotify, and all that. I thank you all for listening. We have listeners around the world and I am super grateful about that.
Thanks for hanging in with us. Hang with us through 2022, we’ve got some cool things that we’re doing. Got an announcement about that in a moment. This is the human emotional experience, and we do endeavor to figure that out together, Mr. Neil, grab your microphone. I am super excited about this announcement.
I’ve been playing around with it for a minute. Cortney and you know, we we’ve, we’ve grown, we’ve done new things. Facebook lives if you’re listening to the podcast version, you’ll see this long beard and we have a YouTube thing. We’ve got the Facebook live. This is soccer’s coming off soon. I think.
Yeah,
Cortney Donelson: I think so. You think so
Chris Gazdik: [00:02:00] Kasie was like, yeah, you can’t decide if you want it short or long. I asked my wife, I was like, do you like this at all?
Cortney Donelson: Although it makes you look very psychological. I didn’t say that that’s with
Neil Robinson: wives. It’s like, they hate it or they like it, or they love, and my wife has kind of this, like if it gets too scruffy, she’s like you got to shave it.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Well, she was nice enough not to say she hates it. Thank you, Lisa. So the announcement drive at we’re announcing that we are going to have a merchandise component of through a therapist, eyes newest, coolest thing. And I’m excited about this because I think that it’s going to be really popular in neat that people can really support the show in a way that, that you’ll you’ll engage the quotes and the things that we say we’ve been kind of storing them up right now.
We’re starting with just our logo on red bubble, I guess. Do you know what [00:03:00] red bubble is? I do
Cortney Donelson: not. Okay. You’re like me,
Chris Gazdik: evidently it’s like a big thing. Everybody knows what red bubble is. Neil what’s red bubble. And what are we doing?
Neil Robinson: Red bubble is one of the, probably more popular print on demand sites. So basically you upload your images, your graphics, and they have a whole network of printers and distributors.
So it’s a great way for people like us, because we can create graphics, put them out. Then we don’t have to store the inventory, manage the logistics of shipping it. So yes, what we’re going to start with is we have the the logo ready. And we also, I had you write that. Let’s figure things out. Let’s figure this thing out together.
Yep. That’s kind of the show slogan. So I had him write it and I basically digitized it. So we’re going to have coffee mugs tremble. Yeah. That’s it’s readable. Yeah. Okay. Cortney, look at it later and see if she can actually read it or not. But I need to edit as the editor, my signature.
Cortney Donelson: Is it too late for that?
I’ll just say it’s perfect. I can [00:04:00] change it. It’s fine.
Neil Robinson: So that’s the start of it. We’re going to start with that, but the idea is we want to start making things with magnet stickers with a lot of these quotes. Cause a lot of these quotes are great things for people to, to have to remember, especially when it comes to their mental health.
And so the goal is, as you start spouting your infinite wisdom with your great sayings, oh, it’s because I really love the stuff you come up with. We’re going to start making it where you can get those in different types of platforms. So what we need from everyone to say you like you don’t like, what do you want don’t want, because I’m sure there’s a lot of people that use red bubble.
They know the. 200 items. You can get on these things and let us know what you like or don’t like,
Cortney Donelson: and the content and that these are kind of therapist slogans and mental health things. I wonder if they have a mirror clings, you know, for like your bathroom mirror or something
Neil Robinson: stickers. I don’t know if I saw a mirror clings.
I know some magnets, one of the things I am going to push, because I love this idea is on, I designed a layout with a logo that says, let’s figure this thing out together. And it’s a puzzle. Oh, I was going [00:05:00] to talk that one up. And I love that because it’s like, you can get this as a puzzle. Yeah, it really is cool.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I was going to talk that, that particular item up, I think that that’s Neal’s brain child. I mean, and I think that’s absolutely cool. You know, being able to have puzzles have become so popular in the pandemic and, you know, I don’t get for this to sound like some promotional thing for us to make millions of dollars, but we do need money for the show.
And that, that is a real reality. And this is a great way to support us. I’m not going to lie about that, but you know, you got a puzzle and it’s like this, figure it out together. Like that’s, Neil’s brainchild. And I think that’s just absolutely awesome.
Neil Robinson: I was hoping to get a yoga mat, but it doesn’t make yoga mat.
I’m going to keep an eye. Cause as soon as they do. I’m putting something mental health on there because yoga is a great self-care. What have you said? What’s the cornerstone of mental health. Cornerstone of mental health is self care. That will be a quote by the way, that way.
Chris Gazdik: And I say that all the time, and these are meaningful things, guys, like, you know, you have a journal that’s on there.
I know they have [00:06:00] journals and things that are, that are good daily reminders, like, you know cell phone cases. And, you know, so when you hear something, you know, maybe you actually pop it to us in an email and say, Hey, I want that quote on there. We’ll make it happen. Cause, cause these are, these are, this is an awesome way to interact with you in a meaningful way that can make an impact in your life.
Neil Robinson: I feel. Yeah. And that’s what, that’s the goal of this. So, and we also have something else coming down the pipe that now another teaser. So we’ll talk about that further down the line as seriously, don’t even know what you’re talking about. Oh, you know what we’re talking about. That’s the other thing, the potential, the potential switch, but you could, that could be included in it, but I’m talking about the.
Oh. Oh, gotcha. So we’re going to try to make it where people can hopefully support us more and give you guys some other cool stuff with the show. Really built a interactive community with you guys.
Chris Gazdik: So Cortney you’re with us here. I am. You are a nationally, world-renowned known editor. You have grown girl.
I am so proud to have known [00:07:00] you back when however long it’s been now, before you like exploded. I just want to sing your praise for just a moment, if it’s okay.
Cortney Donelson: Would that be okay? I might blush. Okay
Chris Gazdik: guys. She is really an editor. She, she edited my book. Hopefully if I didn’t drive her too crazy, she will edit my second book and she is awesome at what she does, honest to God, she cares about what she does with editing services.
She’s in you know, she’s kind of. Energizing yourself with her life mission. How has it say to bring people’s stories to life? Is that giving
Cortney Donelson: voice to stories that matter
Chris Gazdik: giving voice to stories that matter? I screwed that up. It’s
Cortney Donelson: fine. It’s not your slogan. It’s
Chris Gazdik: mine. She does ghost writing. And that is a service that she will write your book for you.
And the cool thing about that really is that, you know, she gets to know the people she’s working with and understands their tone, their dialect. Tendencies their [00:08:00] interaction and their story. And literally we’ll write it for you. And you’re really, really good at doing that because you’ve been in the literature world for like, I dunno ever, maybe.
So how did they find you? How did they do with what you do and a phone number? Okay,
Cortney Donelson: thanks for that. Yes. My company name is , which is Latin for voice. And so the website is your. Y O U R a V O C E m.com. And there’s an email on there and phone number that you can reach me. What is the phone number?
It is area code (704) 608-2700.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Call her and just consult. I mean, you know, there’s a lot of people that have stories out there and writing a book I can tell you is it’s challenging crossing an ocean. There are so many people that have beautiful intentions to share their stories. And I hear them in my therapy office a lot, and there’s a lot of books in there and you can help them with [00:09:00] that because we need to be able to talk about these things.
When it’s domestic violence, substance abuse, dealing with, you know anxiety, my true experience with OCD or having a bipolar parent or, you know, my travels through heroin addiction with my kid. I mean, I’m just actually thinking of literal books that are in our group of Morgan, James. Exactly. And that can be you through and with the help of that’s,
Cortney Donelson: how we connect with stories.
Yes. How people’s souls connect soul to soul with stories. So soul to soul
Chris Gazdik: with stories. There you go. I love that. I love that a lot. Okay. So have you ever had a difficult boss, Cortney?
Cortney Donelson: You know, I have not, but my husband has, and I might be my own difficult boss at this point in my life. No, I
Chris Gazdik: can say court or Kasie, you don’t have to speak up or DW.
I know I can be a difficult [00:10:00] boss. Can I make that statement?
Cortney Donelson: I’ll say it, say it to the back. I said
Chris Gazdik: the room I try, but it’s tough. And I think the point that I want to maybe get out the gates here with this is what we’re talking about today is an intimately involved relationship with somebody that is managing you.
And that inherently has all kinds of emotional realities that come right up in the gate with that, right? Because we’re people, we are people and people have all sorts of insecurities and doubts, fears, frustrations. We are complicated creatures. We are how’s that for a quote, people are complicated creatures.
I don’t know. Do we want to, we want to do that one on a coffee cup.
Cortney Donelson: People are
Chris Gazdik: complicated creatures,
Cortney Donelson: hashtag bad boss. [00:11:00]
Chris Gazdik: It’s too much. It’s too much. So here’s the way I want to start this topic. It’s and it’s actually something that I’ve thought about a lot. Okay. So I have started to do more public speaking. I made a comment about that last week, and this is a public speaking. Gig that if, if you have companies that you’re, that you’re with, I would love to talk with you about this topic.
It wouldn’t be my, you know, hit of methodical management of mental health. That’s a talk that I do. This would be like a different thing. And it’s something that I really would love to get geared up it, you know, at some point and talk with corporations and bigger companies, especially, or I guess actually I shouldn’t say it that way because small intimate companies that are family run have this as well.
Cortney Donelson: You know, that’s an interesting point, Chris, because a lot of companies will hire consultants, but they’re coaches, they’re not mental health professionals with the expertise in degree, but that would be [00:12:00] huge to have as a coach for the interpersonal relationships that occur at work
Chris Gazdik: because here’s what happens these consultants.
And I’m not Downing anybody here. So don’t send me the
Cortney Donelson: hate mail, right? It’s a different arena.
Chris Gazdik: Know that what I’m saying is the core component. That a lot of those services operate by are done through personality inventories, right?
Cortney Donelson: Oh, that’s a great segue, Chris. I have the paper here. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: See. And the reason why that is frustrating to me is those personality inventories are catchy.
Yeah. They’re cool. They’re fun. And you can make a whole presentation out of it. And that’s what a lot of people do for a lot of money. And here’s the deal. It’s not valid. It’s not doing a good service.
Cortney Donelson: Do you want to know my Enneagram member?
Chris Gazdik: It was your one idiot.
Cortney Donelson: Graham. You haven’t heard that personnel.
That one, we don’t need to go down that rabbit
Chris Gazdik: hole. Maybe not because there’s so many of them. There’s ones where you can be a goat, a cow, an elephant, or an [00:13:00] owl. Okay. That’s your personality inventory. And there’s some good stuff behind it, but I really want you to hear and understand personality inventories are now kind of found to be invalidated, even though they’re interesting and fun.
And I’ve got some things that, that I was looking at the back that up. This is just Dr. Google actually it’s unreliable because a person’s type may change from day to day. That’s the reality. That’s the truth of personality inventories. It gives false information, bogus stuff, one Reacher, one researcher put it.
The questions are confusing and poorly worded. Vasmire mere sums it up as shockingly bad. Now a while ago, I think I saw. Article or the study that is Vasmire mere guy was a part of it. It wasn’t a part of this. It’s just what come up. But what they did is they began to research somewhere when personality inventories became popular and fun.
I remember doing an in-service on the Myers-Briggs personality [00:14:00] inventory. Very cool stuff. One component of the four that they operate on is introverted and extroverted. Everyone knows what those are. Right? The other ones are like intuitive and feeling judging and thinking. And I forget the last one off the top of my head, but yeah, judging and perceiving.
Right. And they’re cool domains and they have neat questions and you’ll do it almost like horoscopes. Like, wow, this is cool. This fits me. And the idea is if I can understand my boss and my boss understands my personality inventory, we’ll get along better.
Cortney Donelson: But in the heat of the moment, do we really sit back and say, what is he a dog, a cat, a cow, a sheep.
And what am I? No, we have to manage our emotions.
Chris Gazdik: Exactly I want to replace. And this is key. This is huge, right? I want to replace in this intimate relationship that you have, where you’re day to day today, you’re spending more time with your boss and your [00:15:00] co-workers than you do with your wife or your husband.
That’s kind of a reality here in the way that we live. I want to replace the personality inventories with an understanding of emotion focused therapy.
Cortney Donelson: Can I say one last thing about it? I’ve had all those done through the course of my professional career, personal career, just for fun, like you said, but we’re always told don’t accept the labels that people put on you.
They’re just labels. They’re just indicators that are just information, but if you accept them, then you’re going to live them out. Well, aren’t these just labels.
Chris Gazdik: I do think there more, there there’s a little bit more validity on the validity scale that it is more than labels. I do. Now we arrive at fun labels. Like I’m an Allan, you’re a dog and this person’s at like, okay, you know, those are kind of labeling, but they do have some thoughtfulness behind them. And some questions that they’ve tried to [00:16:00] research, like for instance, I didn’t know this, but the big five is a model that has a cool personality inventory type thing that I did find.
And, and this, this article from science, terrific American highlighted this big five model I say in its simplicity. Right. It does it sort anyone into it. Like you were just saying with a label, right. It just informs them where they kind of fall on a continuum of personality traits. There are no tricks, no surprises to be revealed.
The same guy says in a way it’s disappointing. It just means that personality tests can only tell you what you tell it. You won’t learn anything that you didn’t already know about yourself. She adds, and its accuracy comes entirely from how honest and self-reflective you were with the, your answers to the questions, but they did identify with this big five.
Five traits that seemed to be significant. And I think the military also used a [00:17:00] little bit with the personality inventory stuff. That’s where introverted and extroverted comes from, which is a significant factor with your personality traits and the big five they have as extroversion go figure. Right.
I just said what I just said, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism. It’s a weird word. I’m not even going to go into it. Yeah. That is a weird word. Yeah. And openness to experience those are their big five characteristics that helps you to understand yourself on a continuum. But, and here’s where I want to go to with what I would love to replace it with.
We’ve talked about EFT before, right? Abandonment. Engulfment these types of realities. Right? What do you remember about that? I am curious, is that unfair? That’s
Cortney Donelson: a little unfair, but I remember it’s two kind of avenues we take, right. When we’re faced with a situation.
Chris Gazdik: On point. What do you remember? The two?
Well, you
Cortney Donelson: just said them. We either run or we, I don’t know, pursue right. [00:18:00] Pursue. That’s what I meant or withdraw. Okay. That’s what I meant with run withdrawal. Oh, okay.
Chris Gazdik: Run away. Or we pursue, so you’ve heard this before episode 11 and one-on-one and refer people to all the time. It’s more of a marriage show, but understand, this is what happens in our emotional systems.
Well-researched by a guy named Gottman that identified two specific insecurities that drive us in the way that we behave with attachments. Now, you might not think of your boss as having an attachment there, but you do. You have a very involved, personal attachment and they do to you. That’s what group culture is.
In a small intimate settings, such as five people, businesses, or 500 people, businesses, there’s a culture. And that culture is driven by people and people are driven by attachments. There you go. So this is what happens in the attachments. [00:19:00] You operate by either the insecurity of abandonment, where you’re afraid of being alone or not valued or not important enough, not heard, you know, this type of thing, and to gain emotional safety, you will pursue meaning you will talk, you will engage.
You will bring the issues up. You’ll push the issue. You’re sometimes loud about it. Okay. Or engulfement, which is the man or woman not gendered gets insecure about. Engulfed by water, engulfed by flames. And so you see how this goes, where when somebody is having engulfment insecurities, they’re afraid of being criticized, controlled overrun, not even knowing who they are in severe situations.
Right? I lose myself. These are legitimate fears and to gain emotional safety engulfment people, as you said, will withdraw, shut down, put up walls, not speak up. Just take things, be [00:20:00] quiet, avoid issues. As you said, run right? How many people in business meetings are that person who is always asking questions, always talking, always throwing up their opinion, right?
Those are abandonment people. How many people in business meetings? Just sit back and listen, won’t say anything. You don’t know what they are thinking. Those are engulfment people. So that’s a good refresher for your brain. I mean, can you see how that impacts a difficult relationship with a boss? Absolutely.
Cortney Donelson: Absolutely.
Chris Gazdik: Play around with that in your head out loud for
Cortney Donelson: a moment.
Well, I liken it to any other relationship, like you said, these are relationships. We spend a lot of time with throughout the day. But if you have, you know, opposites, just like in any relationship, if the one who’s wanting to talk about it, who is forcing the issue, who, you know, wants to clear the air, so to speak and you have one that’s kind of hiding, running away, not wanting to get into conflict.
Right. That’s gonna especially, and I don’t know if [00:21:00] there’s one that is more prevalent, you know, for a boxer. Yeah. Is it 50 50 in the population? Oh, wow. That’s fascinating.
Chris Gazdik: I’m making that up a little bit, but not really. I mean, it just based
Cortney Donelson: on experience.
Chris Gazdik: This is why opposites kind of attract in a marriage.
You will find somebody from the engulfment camp. If you’re in the abandonment camp, you will find somebody in the abandonment camp if you’re in the engulfment camp. And the thing that I like about this is it is really simple to understand and how it impacts what to look out for. Because when you get in a tough spot and you get triggered, holy crap, that the behaviors come loudly
Cortney Donelson: out.
And if you have a boss who’s abandonment
Chris Gazdik: and
Cortney Donelson: yeah. And then a boy who is a golf meant, then it’s going to seem like an intimidating domineering scary situation. Perhaps
Chris Gazdik: that boss is going to [00:22:00] come off pushy, loud micro manager.
Cortney Donelson: Okay. It’s a big
Chris Gazdik: word. Yeah. Right. And the, and the engulfment employee is going to be freaked out.
What I think you don’t even listen to me. You don’t hear me at all. You run me over you, you know, you, you tell me what to do.
Cortney Donelson: And it’s interesting. Cause they say, you know, people don’t leave jobs, they leave bosses. They do
Chris Gazdik: right. Or they stay with good bosses. If you’re a boss, we’re going to talk about good employees and good bosses in the last segment, then you stay with them and you follow bosses.
I could see this in the corporate world, in the banking sectors that we have. I have a lot of categories where yeah. I mean, they, they, they get their boss in their unit, their bosses leaving and say, where are you going? I’m going through. And the whole unit just up and goes opposite about an engulfment based boss, right there.
Doors kind of closed. They’re aloof not really providing a lot of structure [00:23:00] and abandonment people were like, dude, I don’t know what you want from me. Like talk to me, give me some structure. Tell me what to do. Set some goals. Give me
Cortney Donelson: feedback. Yeah. Feedback
Chris Gazdik: please. Yes. And they’re lost, you know, when, when, when they feel that way or they feel devalued
Cortney Donelson: care about me.
Yeah. Or what I’m doing is not important or I’m not doing a good job.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. And then people just freak out all out when the performance evaluations come out, you know? I feel like when you’re getting an evaluation of any kind or you’re getting an evaluation of any kind, there should be really no surprises on there.
Absolutely. And that comes from an abandonment perspective. I’m going to be talking to you all year long. I’m going to let you know what is the concern and how to adjust. And then at the year’s end when we’re reviewing, you know, but that’s my own slant. So when I have an engulfment person that comes at me with a performance review at the end of the year, and I haven’t heard anything, I’m sitting here.
Ah, well, I mean, what are you going to say? Right. You know, is this [00:24:00] right? I don’t know what to expect. I’m freaking out. I literally don’t sleep the night before people get wirey with this stuff. So really, if you are out there and you have a company that you’d love to, to get some, some, you know, some content with this put together, we can really work with that.
You know, at your agency, I’d love to, you know, to talk with you and contract and figure some of those things out together with your company. Now, just to highlight the power of this as well, some might be listening to this thinking, all right, well, I get it. I get really upset with my wife. She drives me nuts, or my husband really triggers me.
And I get I don’t do this at work. Yeah, you do. But it’s not as loud. Right? You don’t have as much skin in the game. You don’t really get that upset. There are a lot of people that say, I just don’t experience it. I don’t know what they’re talking about at work. That’s because you don’t really get triggered.
And you don’t let me, well, that’s the title. You probably don’t have a difficult boss. [00:25:00] I would submit to you if you have a significant abandonment boss, meaning they’re on the continuum a little bit further than we want on it, on the continuum. That’s going to be a difficult boss, especially for some, if you have a difficult boss that’s on the other side and engulfment, they’re probably more on an extreme side of the continuum and that is absolutely going to be a difficult boss for the others.
And I just explained how that goes back and forth. I think this is a big deal way beyond the personality inventories. Oh
Cortney Donelson: yeah, absolutely.
Chris Gazdik: You know, so let’s look at Another thing that I really want you to think about in the context of the emotion focused therapy. Okay. Let me dial into your mind of Cortney
Cortney Donelson: as an example, right.
Chris Gazdik: When you’re looking, I know you’ve done some public speaking on marriage and you were on our show earlier talking [00:26:00] about it. What do people tend to do in marriage from an abandonment perspective when they’re really triggered, do they examine what’s going on with me or do they blame the other? We’ll give it a multiple choice of two.
Cortney Donelson: I don’t want to say blame the other what they do. Oh, no, we do. You say we,
Chris Gazdik: we have done that. I am so sorry. When I do
Cortney Donelson: that, I know I’m there with you.
Chris Gazdik: That is a natural state that we landed because we’re not always on point and in tune with ourselves, but here’s a newsflash when you get a lot of interfering, When you get a lot of, you know, you feel it mean people get into situations with difficult bosses where they just, I mean, waking up and realizing they gotta go into the office is a drag.
It’s terrible.
Cortney Donelson: I know people who have spent Sunday nights crying [00:27:00] because they had to go to work the next day. Right?
Chris Gazdik: Oh my gosh.
Cortney Donelson: Yeah, because the bosses, yeah,
Chris Gazdik: it’s a lot. It’s tormenting. This is next comment that’s coming out of my mouth is not going to feel nice, but it’s the truth. I, as much as I can see from my eyes and perspective, when this is happening, you’re much more effective to look internally with yourself.
What’s going on with me that this big energy is created. The good news is that’s what you’re empowered to do something about you really deal with what’s going on with the other person. So when you have that energy, you really need to kind of turn your focus to why am I so worked up about this guy at work?
What is going on with me? That this woman at work is driving me nuts. Why am I so upset Sunday night that I’m losing sleep because I got to go in and deal with all this. [00:28:00] Now that’s hard that doesn’t sound like a show on how do you deal with difficult bosses?
Cortney Donelson: No, it doesn’t get back on track. Chris, does that feel off track?
No, I’m teasing. We all, I think you, should I say we as the abandonment crowd along with you? Yeah. I mean, we all have to take a breath, take a hit at the pause button and, and do that. I think when things get energized,
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, I have a perfect example of this, where somebody was talking to me about like how this works for them.
And it was a period of life where they were just struggling and they started to really do their own self exploration and they were really dealing with this difficult person at work might even have been to pursue, pursue pattern by the way. Can you imagine a pursuing employee and pursuing boss?
Cortney Donelson: Yeah.
I’ve known of those. I’ll just say that [00:29:00] I’ve known of those fireworks. Oh yeah. Flying. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And she began to realize, wait a minute, what’s going on with me? And you know what she figured out. I have OCD didn’t know that. Right. I’m a little bit too inflexible, a little bit compulsive about the way I want things to run around here.
Maybe I need to kind of calm myself down, deal with my own anxieties. And she literally, through this, this work process identified a full-blown anxiety reality that she never even knew before. Interesting. Right. That’s going to create a lot of interference in a close relationship that you see somebody every day, you know, in and out of the office.
So you really w I dunno, we’ll talk about boundaries a little bit. We could talk about, you know, communication skills. We can talk about what makes a good employee and what makes a good boss you’re in the last segment, but [00:30:00] is it really, you’re really empowered to get internal with yourself and look at what’s going on to make changes there.
Cortney Donelson: Is it also, is there a control component? If you, especially, if you have two pursuers or two abandonment people, I mean, one is an hierarchal hierarchal terms. You know, the boss or, you know, the decision maker.
Chris Gazdik: How did we get this far in our conversation without mentioning control I
Cortney Donelson: now, but yeah,
Chris Gazdik: it’s point in parcel to the point B because yeah, it’s just a control, such a funny thing, isn’t it?
Yeah. Either want more of it or you’re fearful of it. And in a relationship where there is a formal power structure in place. As opposed to an informal power [00:31:00] structure in place super quick, formal is when somebody has the hiring and firing or delegated legal authority to act like a police officer or whatnot.
Informal authority is where there is no policies, statute law, but you walk in the room and you command the room. That’s an informal power structure. When you have a power structure of any kind involved, such as boss, right? Listen to me, or you’re fired, right control. Is it very
Cortney Donelson: edgy issue, even if it’s just implied?
Absolutely. Man. Doesn’t even have to be directly stated. Yeah, it can be through behaviors or just the title alone
Chris Gazdik: and let’s face it. Abandonment people throw their opinions around a lot, say a lot express opinions, a lot, you know, to people we are attached to. Yeah, not trying to push you over right. Or control you. [00:32:00] Right. I’m just trying to do a good job as a boss, which is partially trying to be a good coach.
That’s actually on the list, but it can be felt and interpreted right. Perceived that you’re controlling me. Just give me some clinical freedom here for crying out loud. I don’t need you to tell me what to do. I’ve been doing this for 15 years. Right? You get these things, all this interference. So yeah.
Controls is a big part of what we’re doing. I didn’t say this at the top, but you know, Cortney, this was actually your idea of content that I ran
Cortney Donelson: with plead the fifth right now. You can’t do that. Okay. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: I just want to poke around for a moment at what you were thinking with. You know, mental health in the workplace is a cool topic.
You know, having a difficult boss, like what were you, well, how did I get
Cortney Donelson: here? How’d you get the winding and twisting road? That is my brain. No, I was thinking about [00:33:00] mental health in general terms in a lot of different, you know, venues, a lot of different environments, a lot of different systems when I was brainstorming.
And so I came up with a few systems. I won’t say what the other ones are in case you don’t pick them, but
Chris Gazdik: the next one
Cortney Donelson: you can go and go there. So yeah, so I, you know, my mind went to the workplace as one of those environments where you know, it just mental health maybe is not addressed. I think there are so many systems where the whole person is not addressed or the whole person is not able to come to the table or is, you know, restricted.
And so the workplace, I believe, might be one of them.
Chris Gazdik: There’s a lot of mental health in the workplace. I feel like, you know, there’s a lot of feelings that we’re dealing with. There’s a lot of emotions flying around, you [00:34:00] know? I didn’t sleep super great. Last night. I was kind of a little bit tired today, you know, thankfully I felt okay.
How many times do you have a difficult thing with I don’t know. Let’s just say your neighbor out there. I’ll give a shout out to Kevin. He’s my neighbor, Kevin drove me crazy. Cut down all the pine trees in his backyard. If Kevin’s listening to this, he’s laughing his butt off right now. He is
Cortney Donelson: cracking up.
Chris Gazdik: He’s cracking up. Cause he’s not going to take the pine trees down. Are you Kevin? But he get upset about that. And you have emotions about that. There’s an attachment that’s going on there and there’s, there’s a lot of interference that you can get into. And then when you don’t sleep well and you’re irritable, you’re bringing other emotions to the workplace.
Cause Kevin Cook the pine trees down.
Cortney Donelson: Right. And they’re ridiculous. And everybody, hopefully he has a life outside of the walls of the workplace. And so they’re bringing in just as much as any of their employees.
Chris Gazdik: They are real people. Yep. You know, as a matter of fact, [00:35:00] you, you missed the conversation, but when, when you look at.
Developing your vision, which is what we talked about last week. And this is kind of a nice caveat going deeper on those issues that Matthew and I talked about because bosses intrepreneurial minded people. Even if you have a company of a hundred people, there’s one owner and the loneliness that, that is, we talked a lot about that last week.
That’s tough, man. Yeah. That’s hard to be in an emotional position that way, day in and day out. And so they are
Cortney Donelson: people, right. And just the stress, the stress of decision-making day in and day out and, and delegating and everything.
Chris Gazdik: There’s a lot of business books out there. Yeah. There are, and that’ll guide you, but live in it.
You know, we you might be interested since you were thinking about that to listen to that one. Cortney, we talked about the 12 week year, which is an awesome book, my math, you know, that book, [00:36:00]
Cortney Donelson: I just, we had mentioned it. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: yeah. Oh yeah. We were talking about it. Yeah. And they had an awesome, you know flowchart or what is it?
Pattern that you go through you check this out from last week, but uninformed optimism moves into reformed pessimism. You moves into the valley of despair. Oh God, it’s terrible. And entrepreneurs feel that they do, then it goes to informed optimism and ultimately come out to the next stage of success and fulfillment.
And you go through that process and that’s the person that you’re dealing with. That’s your boss. Right. All of that going on. Right. Can they share that? Yeah. Are they going to be honest about that?
Cortney Donelson: Yeah. Maybe to an extent.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Is it appropriate for them?
Cortney Donelson: Maybe to an extent.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, but there’s boundaries there, right?
There’s real boundaries that you have to manage. [00:37:00] Okay. We need to move on because I’m afraid I’ll get stuck here. You know, let me, let me go with some things that I thought about when I was brainstorming I just called it a little segment here on some workplace challenges that might exist. Right. That creates these issues and dynamics with difficult boss, employee relationships.
So tricky title. I just changed it, but it’s important because you can look at yourself as the employee. So tricky relationships between a boss and employees. Would that be a more appropriate title? We’re going to keep it, but how to deal with difficult bosses? Well, deal with self again. That’s a really.
Point here are some things that happen that I brainstormed. How about when an overly qualified employee sees self as unmanageable? Right. I have more experience than the boss I’ve seen this career. I have to. Right. What kind of dynamic does that set up?
Cortney Donelson: Oh, well the [00:38:00] difficult one, right? Yeah. It’s that’s tricky because all of a sudden you’re bumping into that hierarchy.
You’re bumping into confidence. You’re bumping into that control piece. Or if you’re not bumping into it, then you’re not, you know, exploring and developing your own self. You’re not living up to your potential. You’re not working with all of your capable of, so it’s one or the other, and it’s not a, it’s a hard place to balance, I think
Chris Gazdik: creates, Ooh, here’s something cool here.
How do I put it away? It can create a nasty emotion bubble that you operate in. You know, when you’re you, you know, when you feel you’ve got more credentials, more quality, more smarts, more knowledge than your boss, and you really perceive that you boy, what a bubble you get into with that person and how you, how are you going to
Cortney Donelson: interact?
So do you [00:39:00] have any answers, you know, I’m asking for a friend of a friend of a friend,
Chris Gazdik: someone out there maybe might be in this scenario. I love it. You know, it’s, it’s interesting as you asked that, the first thing that pops in my mind is honestly like that person needs to kind of look at what’s going on with me.
Really. I mean, that’s tough. Yeah. It’s tough. Yeah. You, you might have good experience to offer. So might this younger person, so might this newer person. Yeah. I think that might’ve been one of the next ones or whatever, but you know, when, when you feel like you’ve got more, whatever, fill in the blank your friend might need to really adjust the perspective about, okay.
I may have some good experience that’s team can operate with, how can I get that out there appropriately? Balance [00:40:00] the emotion focused therapy dynamics that might be at play. What might be going on with me that I can control to be a better participant in this scenario. I think the key
Cortney Donelson: is we, we always have choices always.
Right. And the first choice you’re saying is first look inside yourself. Yeah. Cause that’s what you can control anyway.
Chris Gazdik: Right, right. And how can I then adjust this? Because I need to become more manageable by this difficult manager just seems backwards because we want,
Cortney Donelson: I know doesn’t seem fair. Just the injustice is just hitting me right now.
Well, I’m glad
Chris Gazdik: you said that because you could feel that way. Yeah. I know I’m talking about, I’ve been doing this for 25 years. This Yahoo comes in here and tries to tell me what to do. Like I can’t abide by that. Well, Okay. Interestingly, if you’re from the abandonment perspective, you’re probably going [00:41:00] to be loud about that and shutting this person up and confronting at every turn.
That’s not going to be helpful
Cortney Donelson: now.
Chris Gazdik: That’ll just make it worse. You might come at that position from an engulfment perspective and kind of just shut down and not do work and develop resentments. Yeah. That’s
Cortney Donelson: not going to work either. That’s what I’m saying, Chris, right? Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: No, but if you come from the engulfment perspective, you can say, okay, I do have great experience.
I really need to speak up a little bit. If you come from the abandonment perspective and you come from that experience of having a lot of experience based compared to your employer or manager or. Maybe I need to tone it down. It’s directly opposite based on what’s going on with me. Right. And that’s a really great place to start.
I don’t know. Is that an answer? Sure. Yeah. Right. When, oh boy, how much time do we get the next thing that came on? My [00:42:00] brainstorm, you didn’t even hear the implicit bias episodes maybe that we did. I don’t even have time to go deep into it. Most recently, who did we talk about that with? Matthew was on last month and we talked about implicit bias.
We all have them. Yeah. So in super short,
Cortney Donelson: Well, they’re just there. I don’t even know if they’re conscious, but their biases or ideas or perspectives that we carry that come from before or experience or something that we don’t even maybe know
Chris Gazdik: absolutely on point they’re real. And if you doubt that they’re real.
And if you doubt that you have them, I challenge you to listen to the episode about three or four ago, and I will prove to you that you do, we all do, we all do, right. So think about this, right? When implicit bias may be active, these are different workplace scenarios, bosses, too young. They’re from another culture.
They come from the outside of the culture that we [00:43:00] already have here. These are like literally thoughts that are conscious even. But what if they’re implicitly believed you’re in for a pickle, right? Because your implicit bias is going to be a part of this interaction. Or if the man. Or boss has the implicit biases against you right now, comically, I will say Cortney, I don’t really have the problem of age-ism anymore,
Cortney Donelson: anymore.
Chris Gazdik: That’s actually one reason why I began to grow my goatee early in my career. I grew to it. So I would look a little older. I grew it that’s right. I said grew to it.
Cortney Donelson: I didn’t even notice that part. I was just laughing at the whole thing.
Chris Gazdik: Right. And, and, but you can be receiving these things potentially, and that gets yucky and that gets sticky.
So again, identify it that that’s, what’s triggering you now. Let’s just stay with ageism. My boss is picking on me. [00:44:00] He’s on my case because I’m young. It makes me feel like I don’t know anything. And I’m talking about, well, all right. You got to realize that that’s, what’s bothering you sort of shutter that back.
And then how can I step into demonstrating that I do yo, yo, I said that as a young person. Right? Right. I do know what I’m talking about and how to operate, and then you can be more effective at, you know, disproving these things, culture, you know, you know, you’re a woman, women shouldn’t be in the workplace.
They should be at home. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Man’s world runs the show like you’re
Cortney Donelson: fired absolutely
Chris Gazdik: nicely done. And I should be if I’m operating from that. But you know, again, the implicit bias here, I mean, I know that I’m oppor reading from that.
Cortney Donelson: Right.
Chris Gazdik: That’s a hard one. Right. I don’t see myself as a male chauvinist, you know, [00:45:00] but if I’m sort of acting that out, like I can’t fall Cortney she’s she’s something’s off.
I don’t get it. She doesn’t seem to make sense out of the business world here. Like, well, my implicit bias belief is women. Can’t do business. Where is she so emotional, right? Ding, ding, ding, ding, back to the abandoned
Cortney Donelson: like that because it all
Chris Gazdik: plays in. Yeah, this they’re too emotional. They’re too erratic. They’re too impulsive.
They’re too, you know, I’m an engulfment person and we want to be logical. I want to be concrete. Let’s develop a correct vision and a direct plan. Oh. Stuff just flies around. Yeah. How about an overall lack of professionalism? Boy, how much time do we have to spend on this? Because I thought that we might camp out here just a little bit.
But I want to get to what makes for a good employee and a good boss. What do you think about [00:46:00] professionalism in the workplace as a part of a difficult relationship with your boss?
Cortney Donelson: My first thought is. To be professional. I think of respect. I think of communication. I think of openness. And I think people forget when they think about being professional about being vulnerable.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, on point.
Cortney Donelson: My thoughts, my, well, I think when people walk through the door of the workplace, so many of us strip away the vulnerability in fear of being too emotional, not good enough unprofessional sweat. Right. And so yeah, I think that’s a huge, a huge factor that decreases communication and probably decreases the courage yeah.
Productivity the competence level of the employee or the boss or the group or the group.
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:00] Right. So, yeah, that’s, that’s neat that you went there because I, you know, it’s interesting Dr. Google definition, right? The competence or skill set, expected of a professional.
Cortney Donelson: Well, thanks a lot, Dr. Google, are you sure that wasn’t Dr.
Webster
Chris Gazdik: in adequate
Cortney Donelson: inadequate? You should never. Okay. I’m an editor. You should never use the root word in the definition when you’re trying to define a word.
Chris Gazdik: Yes.
Cortney Donelson: Oh, wow. The competence or skill expected of a professional is professionalism. Thank you.
Chris Gazdik: Good at what she does, man. That is on point again. You know, generally speaking, I really, I don’t want to venture into a bunny hole about why this is and I think us older Fike folk might look at the younger.
And say, well, he’s young kids don’t know these whippersnappers. Don’t know what they’re doing, you know, come on. But they’re young are dumb social media. They don’t know how [00:48:00] to interact with anybody. You know what Cortney? I absolutely believe you. I think you’re in the same cohort as I am with the gen X-ers with gen X-ers were picked at, oh yeah.
I remember being told you’re a dumb rocker who watches kiss and you don’t know anything about it. That’s a Brock band, by the way, we’re just ignored right now. We’re saying the same thing about the, I know the next generations coming up. Respect millennials have been destroyed. Look, they’re going to be fine.
I know. They’re they’re growing up. I am proud of what My kid is doing. There’s a lot of hope and promise, but yet we believe this thing. And the next statement that I’m going to say, the reason why I started that is because people would say, yeah, well, you know, the greatest generation, they knew how to be professional gen X-ers.
We know how to be professional millennials and younger. They don’t know. I think that human beings generally kind of have as a basis, a bit of [00:49:00] lack of professionalism. And I don’t know why does this sound like a crazy statement or
Cortney Donelson: no, not at all. No, I don’t think it’s off. I think the definition of professional has changed.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. I
Cortney Donelson: think, I think maybe the newer, younger generations understand that vulnerability has to be a component because they’re looking more at the whole body and the whole person maybe than previous generations that we’re like, no hierarchy. You respect the person ahead of you. You, you pull up your bootstraps and you do the work and you earn what you get and both aren’t wrong,
Chris Gazdik: or right there aren’t any right or wrong there.
I think you’re right. Cause I would not have thought of the word vulnerability with professionalism. I don’t think it’s on the sheet. Yeah, no,
Cortney Donelson: it’s not. I threw it on there. I just dropped it and
Chris Gazdik: Kaboom and it’s perfect because here here’s the way a different thing look way of looking at professionalism, I thought was kind of cool.
Where is it? Is I see this as very [00:50:00] lacking in generally folks are lacking in a lot of aspects of professionalism. The emotions are left out of what right. W we need needs manage. That’s what I wrote. That was my thought. And that’s what we’re talking about. Here’s a better concept. Professionalism, professionalism involves.
I have actually have it all in bold here. I don’t know if that was on purpose feeling like it’s easy to read, being reliable, setting your own high standards and showing that you care about every aspect of your job. I think that’s a really cool way of looking at the whole totalitarian perspective of, as you say, the whole person, the whole body, the whole mind, the whole group, the whole relationship caring about.
And how many people, you know, are turning their cameras off on zoom meetings and professional meetings. Now it’s like, kind of like, ah, man, it’s not exactly professional. How many people were way engaged in high energy during a meeting? Oh eight, those people. Right. Which is interesting a [00:51:00] balance. Yeah.
With, with, with that, you know, caring in that aspect of, you know, boundaries that, you know, we talk about, here’s three key elements of professionalism. It’s central elements of professional behavior include knowledge and skills about a field. I think that’s where
Cortney Donelson: usually people stop right in the workplace.
Yeah, for sure. You can do your job. Great. Go do it.
Chris Gazdik: Communication and relationship skills. Number two. That’s. I hear people in marriage counseling come to me and say, oh, we’ve got to learn how to communicate better. And I kind of laugh and I say, you can communicate fine. Never any communication problems, same thing here in the workplace.
There was no communication problems. No, not
Cortney Donelson: really. No. There are relational needs problems.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I mean, this is again where the EFT stuff comes into play. You can talk about business plans. You can talk about vision. You can talk about complicated algorithms with, with your budget. [00:52:00] You know, you can do all sorts of cool conversations. Marriage couples have planned a wedding. They’ve planned kids.
They’ve talked about money, but oh boy, when they get elevated and their emotion and they get triggered, when they talk about money, how do those weekly budget conversations go horrible because your emotion kind of comes in. And so professionalism, doesn’t take the emotion
Cortney Donelson: out and learns how to manage it in a relationship.
Chris Gazdik: But it denotes the management. So I just pause there, you know, communication and relationship skills. Okay. Well at least they say and relationship skills, but the communication, I just, you know, that’s not the problem. It’s the emotion in communication and relationship skills, thirdly work ethic and professional ethics.
Ethics are a part of professionalism. Yeah. Okay. Let’s hit on to the last segment a little bit here. I think in dealing with a difficult boss. How are we doing though? Cause I don’t know that. We’ve you [00:53:00] asked question. I think we came up with something. Do we have so far submit, check. Keep me honest.
Cortney, are we answering the question? How to deal with a difficult
Cortney Donelson: boss? Well, I think step one has been answered and that’s to look, look at yourself first, look inside. What’s being triggered. Where are you operating from? Do you need to manage your emotions?
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, because I, I just thought about, you know, I looked at what makes it difficult or a good boss and what makes a good employee.
And I didn’t do a lot of times in my show, prepper thinking, you know, like the end is like, well, how do you manage? That’s a, that’s an answer to the question that we started imposed
Cortney Donelson: with. And there are, there are gonna be a lot of different answers because there are abusive bosses. There are toxic bosses.
There are, I mean, difficult can be a wide ranging. Those are categories that you would handle them very differently.
Chris Gazdik: You know what, I’m glad you said that because here’s a, here’s a, I didn’t, I didn’t think about this, but we did this [00:54:00] last week when we were talking about, you know the topic, the vision and the lonely.
No, I’m sorry. I just screwed up. It was, it was another show he shows bleed together. My brain sometimes recently we were talking about narcissism. That was the last show. That was the one that just popped out. Safety is a non-negotiable reality right now. We’re not talking about domestic violence here today.
We’re not talking about sexual abuse here today until NOW. Because that is a very real reality that we do see in the workplace. When you have a power structure, people are afraid to speak up. People are afraid to speak out and to tell you if your emotions are fearful, that’s a sign just like in domestic violence
Cortney Donelson: right. If you’re not safe, this, if you’re looking inside yourself is not going to help you.
Please get to safety. Great
Chris Gazdik: safety comes above [00:55:00] all else. And we talked about that with the narcissism show. Oh God. We could do a whole, another one on a narcissistic boss, right?
Cortney Donelson: Yeah. Have you seen the movie bad bosses? That’s all I know. That’s all I have in my head right
Chris Gazdik: now. Is it a comedy or a drama?
Well, it’s a comody, I would think. Yeah, you could have fun with that for sure. If you’re concerned about your emotional safety for. Well, I’m not talking about my emotional safety is upset because my engulfment doesn’t give me any structure. And I’m not saying no, I don’t mean to belittle that a little bit, but you know, that can be a big FA I’m talking about like emotional, abusive behavior, sexual touching.
These are things that are not okay. Not safe. You got to go period. Like you got to go, right, Neil, you got thoughts
Neil Robinson: there actually as a current event of a large grocery store chain, that actually is being sued because some, I think a guy actually committed [00:56:00] suicide because of a wow in the workplace. So that goes back exactly to the thing where it was an unsafe situation and he tried to deal with it supposedly, but it ended up driving.
It got that bad. And so back, it goes back to the extreme of what can happen. And I, and I can give you that link after the sharp, Chris, I didn’t want to say the name.
Cortney Donelson: Yeah, no, that’s good.
Chris Gazdik: Well, public, is it, is it in the story on the link? Yeah. Well, I’m curious,
Neil Robinson: Kroger’s there was a branch, a branch, I think in Ohio, I think as well, I’ll put the show notes so we can just buy, but yeah, one of the people recently committed suicide and there was all this whole thing where it was just a very toxic his manager.
And then that’s from what they’ve said with the lawsuit side of it. So
Cortney Donelson: yeah, I, in my previous lives, I’ve had many careers and one of them was in HR. Oh wow. And so yeah, were a
Chris Gazdik: dynamic person.
Cortney Donelson: I just get bored easily now, [00:57:00] but I mean, it, if you’re not sure whether or not you’re safe, then go find an HR rep or someone to talk to that you can figure it out or, or a therapist outside of work or something like that.
Sometimes it’s not easy to tell. And you don’t know what’s happening to you. Maybe you don’t recognize. Yeah, or you’re afraid. So get a talk to someone, get help, go to HR, go to therapy. That’s our
Chris Gazdik: counselor. And they’ll tell you, oh, no, I think you’re way over reading this. This is not, I don’t, I’m not hearing anything here yet.
But they may also confirm and validate like, yeah. Wow, we got a problem. And thank you for speaking up and being a whistleblower is that they call it, you know, I mean, those are super difficult things to do. And matter of fact, I would refer you to our moral courage show, you know we’re very early on in our history, like episode five, seven, or something like that.
We did a show on, on how difficult is it to, to demonstrate moral courage and [00:58:00] yeah, human resource managers, they were probably listening to the show just like, wow, man. You know, I’m glad they finally got to this stop probably, you know, because it is, it is really look, it is, I don’t know how about this.
This is a guess this is an educated guess. Is this type of demonstrated severity, like Neil just brought up with the current event of suicide, as common as domestic violence is
Cortney Donelson: that’s a, yeah. I mean, you said to yourself, we spend more time at work than we do at
Chris Gazdik: home. Right. Or our suicides in the workplace because of this stuff, as common as suicides in, in, in, from a marriage distress or
Cortney Donelson: in schools or in
Chris Gazdik: schools or anywhere else, you know?
I would venture to say, yeah, yeah. You know, and that’s a sad, cold, hard reality. So we’ll button this up by saying again, safety, safety, safety, safety comes before all else. If you’re not feeling emotionally, physically, or sexually safe, [00:59:00] then I love what you said. Tell somebody any daggum buddy, don’t be alone and leaf that awesome salary you got is not worth that kind of.
Make that bold statement. So what makes, I don’t even know if that’s bold. That’s almost sounds like common sense. Doesn’t it? So what makes for a good employee? A good boss, I guess. And I just kind of popped on the Google thing. We got what makes for a good employee on biospace.com. What is that? Do you suppose?
Right. biospace.com. Confidence makes for a great employee, great communication skills. We talked about that,
Cortney Donelson: you know, like we can all communicate. It’s just how,
Chris Gazdik: when we’re in motion or work experience, get yourself experience in your industry, having a growth mindset, you know, engulfement [01:00:00] people just to pick on that for a second, it might not be forward-thinking in their growth and expert, or I’m espousing that.
Abandonment people might be too cocky and, you know, not really understanding the type of growth we’re looking for it, leadership, potential, innovative ideas, teamwork, and reliability. Those are things that you think about. Maybe I liked their lists as a, a good employee now. Interesting. As you hear these things, right.
Can you grow them? Is that something that’s inherent or is this something that can be worked, can be managed? I think, you know, I think so you increase your competence crap. My whole industry is built on that, right. Communication skills. Yeah. You’re gonna learn how to manage your emotions better. I wrote a book on it, right?
How about that?
Cortney Donelson: Go read it.
Chris Gazdik: Work experience. Okay. Well, that’s something that you have to build and you grow having a growth mindset, read a couple of business [01:01:00] books, get geared towards how do you do. Yeah, I think leadership potential and innovative ideas, teamwork being reliable. Those are, those are things that are huge that you can, yeah.
Cortney Donelson: Can I pull from a popular TV show for a second? Absolutely. So I’m going to call out my husband mark for a second. He is a manager and also has managers. He’s one of those middle people that has the, the pole of both sides. Middle-management but he, so he, and I love the show Ted lasso. All right. Oh, you’ve got to watch it.
So there is a lot of leadership and emotional health and mental health issues in that show. It’s not that shows about soccer, but you would be surprised how in a drama slash comedy, that this comes out and they had, there’s a Walt Whitman had a quote that was brought out on the show. I actually now got a t-shirt that says it.
It says be curious, not judging. [01:02:00] And I think it’s a great quote. That means ask questions and it goes to communication. It goes to teamwork. It goes to all these things. You just talked about being both a good employee and a good boss. If you’re curious, instead of going raw, go into judgment instead of making assumptions, instead of criticizing, be curious, ask the other person questions to better understand their perspective.
Yeah, it’s fabulous.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, no, I, it sounds like the show really explores the emotional dynamics of these relationships.
Cortney Donelson: You would love it. You have to go. Have you seen it, Neil? Oh, that’s your homework.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, that’s the homework for all of us. Everyone who’s listening to
Cortney Donelson: through
Chris Gazdik: the trouble is, is crazy.
There’s so many shows that I want to watch right now. I’m just kicking into and finishing Yellowstone. Oh my God. That had me going hard and. You know, star Trek, Odyssey, and then I’ve got star Trek card, and then I’ve got all those arcs coming out and I should stop because people are [01:03:00] taking an inventory of what I watched.
Cortney Donelson: And they are being judgemental instead of being curious
Chris Gazdik: also with what makes a good employee, being respectful, professionalism, being a problem solver, committed, creative, being generous and curious. Generous was an interesting thing. So they had a lot of lists onto that. All right. Bosses, speaking to myself, I guess there was a lot of content out there about leadership, you know, and I’m sure that if you want to be a good manager, you’re going to tap into a lot of those things.
You know, right now we’re reading the 12 week year and it is a cool thing. Thank you, Craig graves for getting us into that and learning from that. You know, and there’s lots of content out there about this dig in people. If you’re managing somebody, look, you need to learn how to do. And here’s the reality.
A lot of times people are just promoted and they don’t know anything about managing human beings, bodies, motions, people, and you’re caught with your pants down. [01:04:00]
Cortney Donelson: That’s terrible. That’s a bad analogy right now.
Chris Gazdik: Do we need to rewind and cut a shout out? Okay. Yeah. That is a bad dagum. I’m sorry about that. You’re caught unprepared. How about that? Is that better? And so I really want to just highlight Lee. It is really important for you to get training, to get geared. And I remember taking some, some trainings early on in my career because I was starting to get into management of people and I, you know, I’m like, yeah, I need to figure this out and get, get trained.
Don’t think that you’re going to be a good manager just because you got.
Cortney Donelson: Just cause you can do the job doesn’t mean that you can manage people. You may be able to manage the job. Managing people is a whole new
Chris Gazdik: animal. Totally awesome. Employee have been for years now. You’re managing other people and that is a totally different skillset.
Totally different mindset. People don’t realize, you know, that lonely road as the Boston entrepreneur [01:05:00] goes it’s it’s yeah, it’s curious. There’s a lot there. Be very, very curious, ask a lot of questions, but they gave some ideas here, the thriving small business.com. That’s a better source than what was the other one.
Biospace I don’t know, but I liked what they had and it was good. Good to trigger conversation, clear or communicates clear vision again, there’s that communication thing. Right? And the emotion are you managing your emotion and communicating a clear vision connects vision to daily activities sets clear expectations.
I like to say in my marriage counseling work expectations, pause best developed. When you have an agreement in place or long-term norms, not otherwise gets a little itchy when you’re supposed to set the expectations in the workplace curves to me. So boy, that’s tricky, right there. Just wanted to point that up provides [01:06:00] feedback and coaching, you know engulfment people you have to coach teach, engage.
That’s tough. Do you do it too much as an abandonment person? I want you to really think about the internal process that you’re engaging with yourself. Bosses here cares about the employees that just are you genuine. You give a rip shares, personal experiences. That’s that vulnerability that you’re talking about, right?
Yep. Makes work fun. Let’s just pause on that real quick. If you’re not doing a good job to have fun, the cornerstone of mental health self-care you’re in trouble. And that is so for groups of people as well. I actually look at it as being the second of three cares, self care. Talk about all the time, relationship care, same thing with relationships, thirdly, physical care.
You know what I love workplaces that allow you to take walks. You ever hear that? Oh yeah. Yeah. Right.
Cortney Donelson: My husband does walking meetings all the time. See [01:07:00]
Chris Gazdik: right. Make work fun. Fosters team development, values, employee perspectives and rewards. Good performance. That’s what they say. Makes a good boss. I hope that we answered a little bit of the, what do you do in a difficult situation?
Because well, some of us up here in a moment, but we need texting and obviously closing thoughts, comments, things you’re thinking about. I
don’t know. Pretty good. I hope cover
your topic. Well,
Cortney Donelson: I think, I think so again, I just wanted to look at the workplace and mental health and when the boss’s role, it’s
Chris Gazdik: fun.
It’s fun. And I thank you for creating the, the topic. Look, to sum us up. I hope that we’ve given you some thoughts and pieces that can really help you, because I think there are a lot of us out there that are dealing with these edgy emotions, difficult people, but difficult emotions inside of ourselves.
There is help. Don’t be alone. Use your HR. [01:08:00] That’s a great point that Cortney brought as a wonderful teaching moment because you feel scared, alone, uncomfortable, shameful, guilty. Those are the real reality is people are struggling and striving with in the workplace for all types of PLISSIT biasness and things that are, that are going on.
So we endeavor to figure this thing out together as what we say. These are issues that are very real in the workplace. So be thoughtful about it. If you’re in a tough situation, get out if it’s emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, if it’s manageable, we have a lot of hope about being able to manage the emotions in that difficult boss relationship.
So get to it. Hopefully we’ve been a little bit helpful. We will see you guys next week with a topic to be determined.[01:09:00]