Hello everyone and welcome to This Is Not What I Signed Up For. It's the next edition of our podcast and I am super, super excited to have Beverly Beuermann-King joining me today. Hi Beverly. Hello Ross. Great to have you with us. A brief intro for Beverly. Beverly has an impressive track record spanning over 25 years and has been guiding her audiences towards mastering their reactions to stress, cultivating a culture of resilience and achieving thriving, engaged lives through her innovative SOS principle and Work Smart, Live Smart presentations. Beverly works with teams and leaders to shift from stressed, stressed out to resilient. enabling them to be more engaged, productive, and healthy. And I think this is something we all need and we all want in the space we are in. So welcome Beverly. I'm very glad to have you. Thank you. So Beverly, I go into a little bit of an icebreaker for every podcast. And I wanna find out from you what is one of the worst pieces of advice you've ever received or the worst mistake you've made in terms of management or working with a team or something like I'm going to go with the first one because I think that one's easier for me to do in a short amount of time. Probably the worst advice that I've received, and I think many of us have received this advice, is to just let it go. Just ignore it. It'll go away. Don't worry so much. Which is terrible advice because nobody gives you the how -to to do that. So they say, just let it go. Well, what does that mean? And so it sits there. it festers, eats away at us, and then we feel even more guilty because we're not, you know, we're not letting it go like we've been told to let it go. that's true. I am so guilty of that. that kind of thing. I will go into my own head and it becomes a whole big thing. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, it's summertime right now. And so I cut the grass. I have a lot of grass. And so I find that's when it really hits is I'll be sitting on the lawnmower going around and around. so my thinking is also going around and around, right? Like I just get caught in this, this spinning thing and I can't break it. And so I think for letting it go, it, you know, there's a lot of different strategies to do that. But for me, the biggest thing is how do I move this forward? And so if I can get right into the problem solving of it. What's my next step? Who can I talk to? How am I going to deal with this? As opposed to replaying the situation and go, I wish I would have thought of that. Like, I think most of us come up with the great one -liners like five hours after the fact. And then, I wish I would have said that, right? So it does play on our mind. It does stay with us. It's not necessarily about letting it go. It's about how to move it forward. Mm, I like that, I like that. Great, thank you. So today, and I'm quite excited about this topic because I think it's there and we perhaps don't talk about it or it is kind of a let it go maybe in a way, but we're gonna be talking about toxic behavior today. And I think this is something you see in teams. I've had this in teams before where, small things can just like start spreading. And it's a really, really great topic to get into, especially from new managers and folks who perhaps haven't seen it from that management perspective. So Beverly, I'm going to ask you first, can you define toxic behavior from your side and perhaps give us bit of insight as to what happens when it's not addressed? Absolutely. Almost all of us have dealt with somebody who's negative or who's difficult, right? You know, the different personalities, those that are demanding, those that always do the one -upmanship, that show you up, that do the gotchas, the manipulators. There's a number of different characters that I talk about in my presentations. But when it becomes toxic, it's when it becomes more ingrained. I love the definition for toxic. It's malicious, harmful, Harsh. I mean, these are all great words, right? But it has that impact. And it's not just a one -off behavior or attitude. It's the fact that it's infecting and impacting the people in the organization. And so you see where people, you know, it gets to the point where in the team, the team becomes ineffective at dealing with the problems, the issues, the customers in front of them. So it becomes ineffective. It becomes destructive to the people around them. And it's interesting because we talk about toxic workplaces breed toxic employees and toxic employees breed toxic workplaces. So it's this continual ripple out infection that happens within our team. Yeah, and think that hits on exactly the next thing I wanted to get into with you. And I'm just thinking, as you're mentioning this as well, I've had this in a team that I was looking after where we had a absolute superstar as far as the work goes. But because of that, the attitude and the, entitled is the wrong word, but the godlike status that he was elevated to I think rubbed off and he was so difficult to work with and so toxic to work with, even though he was amazing at the job that he did. But with him being like that, it did spread, it affected people. People would ask for help and like, I'm not giving help. And then they would be grumpy and not want to. So I've seen this kind of go, but I mean, you've discussed the space. How do you see? this toxic behavior spreading? How does the attitude affect the culture and what you're saying now with the teams and the company and everything? Yeah, it absolutely does bring the team down. so I've done some consulting work and it's interesting because it often is that high performer, which makes it even more difficult to deal with because they may have the knowledge of the organization. They may have the, you know, the, the, the skills, or maybe they have the connection to the customer. And so often it's tolerated far too long. And because we're not sure of, you know, well, what if they leave or what, know, what, you know, we're kind of a. that the unknown, we're almost willing to deal with all of the bad and not the unknown. But the problem, you know, or not the problem, but the interesting piece is, that when leaders have actually dealt with that person and maybe they've had to ask that person to leave, you know, they fire that person, it's almost like this sigh of relief comes across the entire team. It's like everything is lifted off people's shoulders because everybody is walking on eggshells. You can't trust, you can't collaborate, you can't communicate. It impacts absolutely everything about the way that we do the job. And so one of the things that I say in my presentations is that a really great leader doesn't ignore the problem. And so a really great leader steps into it. And first of all, they don't get caught in the absolutes, like that person will never change. But what they do is they're willing to step into dealing with that person and say, I'm going to do whatever it takes. to help this person to succeed and to make the changes that they need to make. And if they do, great. But if they don't, I'm going to do what I need to do in order to protect the rest of the team because it is that important. And so I think if you can think about it as impacting everybody and, you know, we see higher rates of turnover. We see where, you know, our productivity, our creativity, all of those things are impacted by that toxicity being allowed to take place. Yeah, you bring up such a good point there with everyone's on eggshells not wanting this person to leave or the fear of them leaving. In my experience, ultimately most of the people leave. It's been the case of that happens or the culture changes and the other people leave. But you spend so much time, and I think a trap that I see a lot is people spend so much time managing the toxic person. that they neglect the stars in the team and the upcoming stars and the folks that could be doing really well. And that spreads as well because now you're devoting too much time to the wrong, well, not necessarily the wrong, but a different side of things. And you're letting the ball drop on your stars that could become. And I see both things happen. I see where some leaders put the blinders on and they don't acknowledge it. you know, the team will figure it out. It'll, it, it'll work itself out is like the worst strategy, right? It's kind of like the let it go. and so, you know, they'll either put the blinders on or like you said, they spend so much time and attention managing that person that everybody else just kind of falls by the wayside. And so you, you lose. all of this collateral and productivity and engagement at the expense of trying to keep this one person. When in reality, almost all of us can be replaced. It's not going to be easy, right? And so your goal as a leader is to put together the right team. And the right team is one that can move things forward. It's the team that can adapt and make changes and move into the future. Right? And so that's who you're wanting on your team. Yeah, for sure. And I think there's so many aspects to it with sort of single person dependencies as well when someone is the only one who can do it. And I'm a big fan and in all my teams, I've pretty much tried to get everyone to share that load and know what to do. I feel like it's an asset sharing the knowledge as opposed to hoarding the knowledge because then the person hoarding the knowledge can become a liability in this space. Beverly, you mentioned a phrase to me when we were chatting about this called Payoff. Tell me about payoff. The payoff. The payoff so one of the the strategies when we talk about people who are negative and dealing and difficult Often they're acting that way because they get something from being that way That's one of the the seven assumptions that I have when it comes to dealing with people who are negative and difficult You're you learn it over time and so a great example is as you know as a New baby we learn how to communicate and we learn that if we make a noise we get a response And around the two week mark, babies become very smart and they realize that if they make a bigger noise, they get it a whole lot faster. And it's not that babies are being manipulative. That's how they're learning how to communicate and get their needs met. But for some people that becomes their predominant way of responding, even as they become an adult, even as they enter the work world. so understanding what is it that people get when they're being negative and difficult? So somebody who stomps, screams and shouts. What's the payoff? I tend to call that person the bull, right? The person who goes into the situation and then just, you know, they're stomping all over everything. And a lot of time people think that they just, they want their own way. But really the payoff is they want control. They're feeling out of control in themselves or they're feeling out of control in the situation. And so they're trying to get that control back. So control is one. Recognition is another. That person who puts other people down, who shows people up, steals their glory, takes credit for their work. That's the, know, they're wanting recognition. You know, I call that person my peacock. There's the turkey. That's the person who gobbled up like they, you know, it's the whiner complainer and they're looking for attention. But often what happens when somebody's whining and complaining is that we check our watch, we tune them out. Everything about our body language says, I'm not listening to you. So they have to do more warning, more complaining. They have to bring more people in, which is how it becomes toxic because it becomes contagious within the organization. So what is it that people are looking for? Control, recognition, attention. You know, I win, you lose is another one. So I'm up here, you're down here. Fear is another one. So people who use their sense of humor as a way of taking you off topic. or they start crying in a tense situation. Now, I'm totally guilty of this. When I get mad and angry, I start crying and it makes me even more mad and more angry, but I'm going to deal with this situation. So that's not avoiding. That's just me getting frustrated. But some people will do that to take you off topic so that you don't deal with the tense or the important or the conflict that's in front. So when you understand that, then you can meet those needs in a much different way. So somebody who's looking for control, I can give them control without giving them carte blanche. I can say, okay, what are the options? Do you wanna do it this way? Do you wanna do it that way? Do you wanna talk to me? Would you like to talk to somebody else? And the more choice they have, the more in control they are, the less of the stomp, scream and shout behaviors you're going to see. that's fascinating. And that leads you to that addressing that different toxic behavior that you're having that it's like a disarmament. yeah, as a leader, part of it is knowing that, but then as a leader, you have a lot more responsibilities. So if we're in a team and Ross, it's you and I, we have to work this out. We have to kind of figure this kind of thing out. But if it becomes where it's spreading to other people or it's impacting the way that we do the work or it's impacting the customer, as a leader, that's when you have to step in. That's when you have to... to figure out how are we going to deal with these toxic behaviors? And the first step in strategy is really to prepare, which seems so incredibly easy. Like, it's kind of like the let it go. But there's so much to this, and this is often the step that's missed because somebody blows up in a meeting. Our instinct is to deal with it right away, but that may be the worst thing to do because we're not prepared. We don't know what it is we want to say. We haven't prepared for all of the different scenarios. How is that person likely to respond in this situation? Are they likely to finger point or pull other people in, walk out of the room, slam the door, get aggressive? We need to be able to replay or figure out those situations and how are we gonna respond so that we're not caught off guard. Preparing is also about what is the goal of the conversation? And often the goal, if you kind of boil it down, is to have a productive... work environment, know, productive, engaged work environment, and these behaviors aren't facilitating that. But you have to have that all in your head before you ever go into one of these conversations. Yeah, I remember many years ago, we were working with some external consultants and one of them was particularly explosive. And I think some of the best advice I received at the time, because he was, he was screaming, shouting at absolutely anything that happened, didn't matter who you were. And some advice that I received, because we were trying to change the response that he would have kind of thing. And we got told, well, you know, You can never turn a cactus into a flower. What you can do is put gloves on and prepare when you're going to be dealing with the cactus, so if you have to pick it up. And that was such a great little change in my mind from Leanne, the lady who told me that, where I then dealt with it very differently. And instead of trying to change the outcome of the screaming and shouting, prepared for what could come of that and how to address it. it worked a lot better. Yeah, I love that. it isn't, we can never change somebody. mean, sometimes we marry that person trying to change them and that never works out. Or, you know, I have two boys, I can't change their behavior and they're mine, right? Like I, I raised these things. So we have no hope of changing somebody's behavior in the work world. What we can do is figure out how do we move those forward? So I always talk about going from problem identification into problem solving. And we spend an incredible amount of time in the problem identification mode of trying to figure out what's wrong or how do we deal with this person. But what we need to do is figure out how do we move them forward? How do we go from what is it to what are we gonna do about it? And so when you understand what the payoff is, when you've prepared ahead of time, you're in a much better position to have the conversation on how do we move this forward. And so, I think when we talk about kind of that first step, there's a lot in that preparation. But then we look at the strategies for, okay, how do we move this forward? How do we problem solve? The kind of the second piece for this is we need to start the conversation by listening, which is often not what we do either. first, awesome. So we go into it, the guns are blazing and this is what needs to be changed and the person already has their backup. So I love that the start of doing this of going, Okay, what do you think is going well and what do you think is not going so well? And when you frame it in that kind of way, then you start to hear it because maybe in that initial step of doing your research, maybe you didn't ask the right questions to other people. Maybe you didn't get all of the background of things that were going on. And that can color the way that this conversation goes. So you start by listening. You start by hearing what they have to say and then you give some feedback. This is what's working and this is what's not working. I think the other mistake that leaders make is that we assume that people would just know that the things that they're doing is not correct, is not acceptable. And a lot of people don't have that insight. And so when you say, here's what you are doing that's working and here's what you're doing that's not working, you give them the contrast, you let them know that these are the things that you want to see more of and these are the things that you don't want to see. and why it doesn't fit with your values. You know, the team values. I always say that our values are our rules of engagement. And so first of all, you should have them. And if you haven't defined what it looks like to live them and not live them, you need to do that work first. Cause you can't tell, you can't hold somebody accountable to something that you haven't defined. yeah, so define what it looks like when we're not living it and then show that say, is, this is where we're not living these values. And then you give them an opportunity to fix it, to change it. And you need to give them the support, whether that support is training, it might be training on diversity or communication or whatever that looks like, time management even. What support do they need from you? And then I think the last step is the follow -up. Because sometimes we think we've had the conversation, it's one and done and we will never talk about it again. And we know that the biggest... sustainer performance is by that ongoing feedback. So how are you going to give that feedback? What does that look like? And what are the deadlines? What are the timelines? And how are you going to monitor this so that everybody's on the same page? that's great. That's great. Such a sum up and round up of all of that. It's Beverly, as we're heading to time, if you start addressing all of this toxic behavior, there's the obvious visual benefits that we might see in the team. But what are some of the benefits that might not be directly visible to addressing this toxicity? Again, we talk about engagement, but I think the other piece is mental health. This takes a huge toll. And that's my background is on mental health in the workplace. And so it does lead to burnout. It does lead to people not having balance in their life because they're so totally exhausted from the day that when they come home, self -care, what to eat, how to have conversations with other people, they don't have the energy for that, which becomes more isolating, which becomes more devastating. And then, you we lose really good people because we didn't take the time and energy to deal with this. you know, that's, that's a piece. The other part is people talk and it's going to become harder to attract people to your organization. If we want to be the employer of choice, we have to step into these really hard conversations. Yeah, that's so true. Beverly, thank you so much for sharing this knowledge with us, the listeners. This has been fantastic. As we wrap up, give me a little bit about what you're working on in your space currently. Surprisingly, this is a lot of what I'm working on right now because I started off my background is in mental health, like I mentioned. so mental health resiliency, how to deal with burnout. And then post pandemic, this has really grown because it is having such an impact on our organizations. I did a program called Stop Letting That Difficult Person Ruin Your Day before the pandemic. And then there was crickets. It was one of my top ones. And then there was crickets. during the initial parts of the pandemic for like the first 18 months. And it has continued to grow over these last few years. And so people are tired, people are worn out, dealing with other people, they don't have the patience, everything gets on our nerves right now, because we just don't have anything left in the tank. And so this is one of the biggest areas for my business right now. Okay, fantastic. Well folks, if you want to find out a little bit more about what Beverly's doing, her write -up and links to her sites are going to be in the show notes. So Beverly, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been fantastic. I love what you've taken us through. It's been great having you on. Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me. This was a lot of fun. And so I hope there were some useful tips in today's discussion with it between us. So many. So thank you very much, Beverly. Thank you to our listeners. And we'll be back in the next two weeks. Thank you, everyone. Cheerio.