Welcome to the powerhouse Revolution Podcast. I’m Lucy Gernon, ex corporate leader turned CEO of my dream business, helping corporate female leaders just like you to create your dream career and life. At 40 I quit the corporate world as I was tired of doing a job that no longer led me up and wanted to live my life my way. I created the power house Revolution podcast, to give you simple, actionable tips and strategies to help you create the perfect career and lifestyle that you and your family deserve. So if you’re a corporate female leader or manager who is ready to step into her superpowers and live the life you were born to live, you are definitely in the right place, because life is way too short to dread Mondays. Okay, let’s jump into today’s episode.
Unknown Speaker 0:59
Hello there and welcome back to the podcast. I’m Tiarna powerhouse revolutions podcast manager, stepping in for Lucy Gernon, and I am here to bring you through today’s episode. So Lucy recently did a radio interview discussing the topic of workplace bullying, we’re going to do something a little different today, I’m going to play some clips from that interview now as Lucy shares her thoughts and tips with us. And I hope you enjoy. The Workplace Bullying Institute did a recent study that found 80% of women bullied in the workplace have been bullied by other women. Lucy is going to discuss what he thinks of these findings.
Lucy Gernon 1:33
I think the key word here is perceived bullying. Okay, so first of all, people project their own pain onto others. And a lot of the time for ourselves if we’re in situations where we perceive and that really is the key words that were being bullied. Sometimes it’s because of our own beliefs about ourselves. So I am not saying full disclosure, there are absolutely cases of pure bullying that do happen in the workplace with women and women and women and men and all of that stuff. But in a lot of cases, it is really all about us not stepping into our powers owning who we are. And I suppose fighting our corner if you like. So for example, I was working with a client not so long ago, who really felt she was being bullied by a co worker. But when we really dug into it, I was able to tell her look, relationships are co created. So you have to be willing to look at yourself and the role you play in that relationship. So so many of us, we go around trying to change others. But we can never do that we can only change how we respond to the situation.
Unknown Speaker 2:39
In the workplace, there can be stress and tension, especially if it’s the case that people are taking things personally. Lucy goes on now to discuss the unspoken narrative of competition in the workplace between women.
Lucy Gernon 2:50
So I think that there’s this kind of it’s an unspoken narrative that there’s this competition at times in the workplace between women. And I definitely see it with women and leadership, in particular in male dominated industries where there may be only a couple of women, you know, on boards or in high open organizations, and there’s a lot of men. So because they’re in the minority, instead of sticking together and being allies and supporting each other, they actually see each other as competition. But what that does is it actually just drives a wedge between them. It creates hostility, it creates conflict, when my whole motto is if you just stick we just stick together as women and we support one another, we help each other right. And I know it sounds corny, it honestly is a game changer for change in how you feel in the workplace.
Unknown Speaker 3:35
Next up, Lucy shares advice on what you should do if you’re dealing with workplace bully, or a passive aggressive colleague.
Lucy Gernon 3:42
Always, always, always go to the person first. If you feel safe, if you’re physically safe, and there’s no immediate threat, always try and talk to the person first because you have to remember, there’s a very famous model called the old cow, okay, okay, communication model, which talks about the three ego states that live within all of us. We have the parent ego state, we have the child ego state, and we have the adult ego states. And depending on the situation, it can evoke a certain response within us. So for example, if your colleague comes in and they’re in really, really bad mood, okay, it might subconsciously trigger you to feel like more of a child because maybe as a child growing up, your parent was often in bad mood. And your way to survive as a child was maybe to be really quiet, or you may rebelled. So there’s all of these the subconscious things that are happening in our everyday communication. So what you need to remember is that you want to always be in that adult state. And an adult is logical, it’s rational. We don’t you know, you you’re thinking in your logical mind, you’re not thinking in your emotional mind. So I would say if you are feeling if you’re not feeling the best going into work, I would tell your colleagues to say listen, I’m not in great mood today. I think it’s best if you just like leave me for a little while. Just be open and honest. And then equally if you see Somebody who is like that, I will always respond with kindness. Because if you’re feeling something from them, you’re already feeling a small portion of what they’re actually feeling inside. So the way to, I suppose for me is always, if someone was ever mean to me, I would have played the victim back in the day, absolutely, I would have. But now I realize, actually, that person is hurting, and there’s something going on with them. So I try to be be kind and be more understanding. And actually, it makes me happier doing that.
Unknown Speaker 5:27
How has working from home impacted people’s working relationships and communication? Are there different strategies to deal with this?
Lucy Gernon 5:36
Yeah, I think definitely, I think we have removed the human connection. So you have to remember, we are energetic beings. And we, you know, we have our intuition, we have our sixth sense, you know, when you’re working at home, you’re not in the energy of the other person. So we, our minds are constantly trying to conserve energy. So we how we do that is we interpret a lot. So we delete a lot of information that’s coming at us. And we choose to focus on what we see. So when when you’re working at home, and somebody sends you an instant message, for example, you’re viewing that only by the actual Pure Black and White words, you see. So you can interpret there’s no tone in the message, there is no, you know, it’s very difficult for you to really ascertain, and I think there can be a lot of Miss led conflict, and what’s the word I’m looking for here? It’s like, we read something and we go, Oh, why did why did she say it that way, when the person may not have mentored in any sort of way. And then the other thing I would say is, the use of video, I think, is critical eye. If you’re working at home, if you’re just listening, first of all, you’re not going to be engaged, you’re not going to be making eye contact. So I think, if you have everyone has videos on screen, and you’re all looking at each other, actually, that’s how we connect as humans. So you can see facial expressions, all of that kind of stuff. So there’s not as much room for error when it comes to interpretation.
Unknown Speaker 7:00
Finally, Lucy is going to chat quickly about the different roles or interactions that can occur among people in conflict.
Lucy Gernon 7:06
There’s a famous model by carp man called the Drama Triangle. So every time there’s conflict, there’s basically three roles that are happening. You have a persecutor rescuer, and a victim. So the persecutor is obviously the person who is persecuting who is, you know, being being the one who’s being aggressive, or whatever that is, then you have the victim, who is obviously the victim of the persecutor. And then typically, then you have the rescuer. So, if, say, for example, if you’re in a in a group situation, and we’ve all seen at meetings where somebody might speak at a line, you see, the other parcels shrink, and somebody will usually step in, to maybe rescue that other person, right? But what you’re doing there is actually you’re taking away the victims power, because we all have the power within to resolve everything, if we just are able to actually remember who the hell we are, what we’re made of, and what we have to give to the world. This is not for a pure, like, you know, obvious bullying or somebody is actually being bullied. This is more in general kind of communications. But if you if you tend to be so I would tend to be a rescuer. And a lot of us would, it’s actually about speaking to the victim and helping them to coaching them to be able to deal with the situation themselves. Because if, if we step in all of the time, if this is a persistent thing, or somebody just can’t stand up for themselves, you’re actually not enabling them to use their own power. So what I’m saying is, is if you if you see somebody who’s being bullied or being targeted by somebody that you think is unfair, I would definitely I try and work if you’re a strong person, try to work with the victim and try to get them to see listen, you you actually it’s okay for you to stand up for yourself here and actually, maybe she didn’t mean it like that. Here’s another perspective. What do you take? How might you stand up for yourself better next time? How would that make you feel if you did do this, so it’s about getting them to see that actually, this person is only another person and again, this is not for you know, actual pure bullying. This is just you know, general workplace conflicts.
Unknown Speaker 9:13
That’s it for today’s episode. It was a little different but definitely full of useful information that we hope you or someone you know that may need this advice can benefit from and if you enjoyed the power house Revolution podcast today, please leave a quick review on Apple Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. That would be greatly appreciate it. This is Turner signing off. I was delighted to help Lucia to do with this episode. And she’ll be back in your ears next week when the next episode of powerhouse Revolution podcast is released every Wednesday wherever you listen to podcasts by
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
