Repairing Workplace Culture with Michael Sondermann
Melanie Nicholson welcomes workplace investigator, educator, and trainer Michael Sondermann to the show to talk about repairing toxic workplace culture. Michael has more than 20 years of senior management experience and he helps organizations identify, investigate, and respond to workplace conflict. He discusses what that looks like.
Michael Sondermann identifies toxic workplace cultures as being dysfunctional, containing harassment, abusive, and unethical but also points out that a place does not create the culture, the people do. A workplace culture is the collective behaviors of individuals in an organization. He describes to Melanie how that guides his work in repairing the environment. Everyone has to be involved in identifying the root causes of the toxicity. It can often be from the top, the leadership level, but that isn’t always the case. Michael investigates all aspects of a workplace culture, from the public-facing sides to the interactions nobody else ever sees, and then works to get everyone communicating and creating solutions. This conversation is a valuable aspect of toxic workplaces that is often overlooked when addressing the identification of toxicity - namely, what happens next? How can that toxicity and negativity be repaired?
“I think there's a way that you go and you resolve all of your problems, but it requires a lot of trust and faith in each other in an organization to do it. And one of the major ways that you do it is you put aside those prototypical job expectations that don't exist on paper in your job description. So no one at a company is expecting a boss to be a bulletproof, genius, ascendant, flawless human being. No one expects their boss to know everything. So get rid of that. Open yourself up to the possibility that you have created some things or done some things that have prevented your organization from being where you want it to be. And then open up and ask the people in your place what the problems are. And more valuably, ask how they can be repaired.” - Michael Sondermann
About Michael Sondermann
Michael Sondermann is a dynamic leader with more than 20 years of senior management experience in law, business and higher education.
Michael helps organizations identify, investigate and respond to workplace conflict. With a people-first approach to health, safety and wellness, he works to empower employers with the training and tools they need to effectively investigate and resolve workplace issues that affect their business.
Michael has spent over a decade in a variety of strategic leadership roles at higher education institutions. From Legal and Risk Management Coordinator to Associate Registrar and Director of Student Services, he focused on developing an empowered and respectful workplace by conducting more than 400 investigations of student and staff conduct. During this time, he also restructured and improved policies and procedures, and led several committees to achieving success on a myriad of complex issues.
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Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Contact Melanie Nicholson | Melanie Lynn Communications Inc.
Contact Michael Sondermann
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Transcript
Melanie Nicholson: [00:00:03] Hey, everyone, and welcome to It's a Theory. I'm your host, Melanie Nicholson and today we're talking about repairing broken workplace cultures. There has been so much conversation around toxic workplaces, bullying, harassment at work and more. So somewhere is identified as toxic. Great. Well, then what? What happens to actually deal with the problem? Today we're talking with Michael Sondermann. Michael is a dynamic leader with more than 20 years of senior management experience in human resources, law, business, and higher education. As a workplace investigator, he’s helped organizations identify, investigate and respond to workplace conflict. Michael is currently the manager of human relations at the Tsuut’ina Nation Police Service. And while this conversation does stand on its own, I really encourage you to also listen to our chat with psychologist Jennifer Berard where we talk about the impact of trauma at work and the opportunity for employers to be more trauma-informed. These two episodes together are invaluable for anyone who has a team of people that they're responsible for. Today, Michael is sharing more about what it's like to walk back into a broken work environment and how they work to slowly put things back together. Let's dive in.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:01:28] Michael, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here today.
Michael Sondermann: [00:01:32] Thanks for having me, Mel.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:01:33] This is an interesting topic, and I've always been curious about the theory behind repairing broken cultures. So we hear about them being broken, getting broken. But I think we hear less about coming out the other side. And when we're talking about a toxic workplace, we're talking about one that's disrespectful, non-inclusive, abusive, unethical. I've seen cutthroat in the mix. But I was reading a poll recently on fortune.com that said 64% of respondents have experienced a toxic work environment and 44% blamed the entire leadership team. It sounds low.
Michael Sondermann: [00:02:14] So 64 and 40 does seem low to me, but I'm not particularly surprised at and I think a lot of it is because where we start off in our lives, right? So we generally as teenagers or young adults start off in minimum wage service jobs and those tend to be really toxic by their nature. So, you know, I think that that's where some of those bigger numbers come from. It's not always the case that as we get older and get into our real jobs in the real world, um, that things are as bad as they are necessary. That's part of the reason why people talk about, why So many people talk about having been in a toxic work culture at some point.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:03:03] Yeah. I mean, I would argue everyone has in some way, shape or form at some point in their career working.
Michael Sondermann: [00:03:10] Yeah, because because of what the nature of what workplace culture is, right?
Melanie Nicholson: [00:03:15] Absolutely.
Michael Sondermann: [00:03:16] And, you know, you've framed this those numbers in this conversation in a really interesting way because those things that you talk about, you know, dysfunction, toxicity, harassment, all of those things are elements of a larger culture that allows those things, that propagates them, that allows them to continue, that oftentimes rewards people that do those sorts of things, right? So lots of us have been in terribly dysfunctional cultures, but we may not have experienced those things, those elements of those cultures. But, you know, the fact that people are taught to that degree, talking about those kinds of culture, things that destroy us as individuals, is pretty disturbing about work, right? Because, you know, one of the things that we know, for example, about work is that the bad things that happen to us at work have a greater impact on our lives outside of work than those terrible things that happen outside of work have in our work lives, right? So once you begin to have that toxicity at work, it begins to destroy us as human beings too.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:04:32] It's fascinating that it's not reversed.
Michael Sondermann: [00:04:34] I know I was surprised by that too. And one of the things I think is because work is oftentimes viewed as a safe haven and a place to go to escape those stresses and pressures of life. And as you get older, you know, life is full of so many stresses anyway. If your work is not one of those places you can escape then, you know, you get caught up in this terrible cycle where you begin to really question yourself and really begin to traumatize us into damage. And there is, I think, something too about the nature of work that when we experience high levels of toxicity at work or abuse or harassment, it begins to eat us as individuals. Right? And that is something that we take into other relationships outside of work.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:05:23] You're going into these workplaces when there I would say at the lowest of lows, they've realized they have a problem there. They're bringing in support to help fix a problem. Can you describe for us what that mood is like when you first get there? I know you've worked with first responder organizations, municipalities and large-scale organizations. When you first arrive, what's the mood like?
Michael Sondermann: [00:05:50] Uh, that completely depends. So it depends on who I'm dealing with. Generally speaking, the mood of the people who are retaining me. So your executive director, CEO, president level, head of HR is hopeful, um, sometimes panicked. Um, you know, it's interesting to walk in or have a conversation with somebody who leads an organization who has just found that people in their organization have been tremendously damaged. It's an interesting eye-opening experience. Sometimes, most of the times it's hopeful, with the people that I'm interacting with that I've been retained with. Another emotion, once you begin to talk to the people who have been damaged is that there's oftentimes a feeling of hopelessness. Um, there is a really palpable sense of the damage to individuals that has been done at work. It's amazing how often people I speak to cry within the first five minutes of meeting me, and it's not anything to do with me, I don't think. Someone said to me not long ago, you know, you're a heck of a good guy and I hate talking to you, which is a good thing, right?
Melanie Nicholson: [00:07:08] Right. No kidding.
Michael Sondermann: [00:07:09] And then, you know, if, you know, depending on the nature of the contract that I'm there for, and the nature of the interaction, once you begin to talk to people who have been accused of contributing to the environment, you oftentimes get defensiveness or aggression. That's, I think, a fascinating sort of dynamic as well. When you begin to talk to those people who have contributed to the dysfunction in an organization, who will remain, um, that's really where the plot of work is.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:07:51] And the theory is that cultures can be repaired. You can get an organization back to some place of a safe, positive working environment, correct?
Michael Sondermann: [00:08:04] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think you have to go back to first principles. So what's a workplace culture, right? A workplace culture is simply the collective behaviors of individuals in an organization. So first of all, let's get rid of the notion that there is a culture at Tesla or there's a culture at Amazon. We remove the people and the culture will be completely different. Okay? So what we're dealing with are personal interactions, and we know from our personal lives that we can go down bad roads with personal relationships, we can go down bad roads with our working relationships too. And if workplace culture is a product of the behaviors of people in your organization, those things can be repaired. I think one of the theories about workplace culture historically has been that they can't be repaired while retaining all the people in an organization. So, you know, there's lots of scholarly articles about the impossibility of repairing a culture without firing the boss, for example. Right. But that's...
Melanie Nicholson: [00:09:19] Which you don't hear about very often. You often, I mean on the more public-facing ones, you often hear about the CEO stepping down.
Michael Sondermann: [00:09:27] Yeah. And, you know, being invited to step down and encouraged to step down. Right? And that's a completely valid thing. If the dysfunction in the toxicity in an organization was caused, allowed, not stopped by that individual. Right? But, you know, one of the other first principles, I think, and one of the ways that the views of workplace culture are changing is that workplace culture is not the product of the boss. Right? The workplace culture is created by the behaviors, thoughts and actions of everyone in an organization. So if you go in to an organization and you look at the culture without looking at every level of the organization, and you don't do any work on trying to figure out what the root cause of the dysfunction is or what the root causes and the foundations of the culture are, then you will never be successful in remediating the culture because you don't know what the problem is. Right? So where in an organization is the problem? And oftentimes it's at the top. If you're a sports fan and your team is not performing well, well, who do you get? Who do you get after? Who do you cut? You get rid of the boss and you assume everything will change over that. But you don't know what the components of that culture are privately and behind the scenes that you don't see. Right. And that is another aspect of culture that we forget about. You know, and one of the things that people like me spend a lot of time trying to figure out.
Michael Sondermann: [00:11:16] So, you know, you and I could walk into a building across the street and we could stand there and talk about what kind of place is this just by the feeling we get. Is it an architectural beauty building? Is it ostentatious? Is the art on the wall the drawings of all the kids in the company? It's a great company in Calgary that features children's art, right? Or is this something that's been bought, a gallery? How do people dress? Do they address each other by their titles? So you've talked about the work that I've done in uniformed services, right? It's very common to walk into a place and say, Chief Inspector, you know, whatever. So we gather these things and these are the public elements of the culture. We also look at things like websites. So websites look like a modern audience. That's not really what, that doesn't tell the whole story. The culture is like an ice, like so many things, is an iceberg. What are the unwritten rules? Right? So, you know, if I call the, if I call my boss 'chief' and he refers to me as constable or firefighter or whatever, that gives us an idea of public culture. But what if what I don't know is what happens if he's in a meeting and says something I disagree with? And I get up and walk out? That says an awful lot about the culture too. You and I never see that.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:12:46] Right.
Michael Sondermann: [00:12:46] What's the culture about acknowledging each other as humans? Do we talk about our personal lives? Is that off the table? How are performance reviews handled? Do you say hi to me when you walk by me in the hallway, or do you just keep going? These are the kinds of elements of culture that we forget about sometimes. And those things are reciprocated, right? I mean, I've seen enough instances where a very senior person walks in and is completely shunned by staff. That's an element of culture, too. So removing that individual doesn't change the culture because those individuals who shun that leader are doing this. What's to say they aren't going to shun the next one?
Melanie Nicholson: [00:13:30] Right. And it's, they as a collective could be that root cause and the other person could be delightful.
Michael Sondermann: [00:13:38] Right. And we've seen that happen where people are constructing, in some cases, an alternative reality in order to achieve an end benefit. You know, and one of the easiest ways to do that is you allege your boss as a harasser.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:13:56] So how do you go through that process to repair conversations, figuring out the root cause? How can an employer have faith that there is an opportunity to repair? Like, what do you actually do to create bridges and remove some of these problem gaps?
Michael Sondermann: [00:14:17] Um, it's really strange to say because you're going to wonder why I get paid to do this. But, um, so often the root cause is that there is no communication between.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:14:28] And people wonder why I have a job.
Michael Sondermann: [00:14:31] Whoa. I know. I once explained, you know, we were sort of joking before, I guess we call it off camera, right? Sort of joking before this about my 22 year old said about what I do for a living, or doing this podcast, rather, and once I explained to him what I was doing with the group and he goes, Dad, like, are they all in grade four? Right? So, you know, but we forget sometimes the basic foundational things about how we communicate and we also find ourselves, I think, in ruts about how we communicate things and we find ourselves just completely going by rote sometimes and not listening and not paying attention. And sometimes it's as basic as getting back to those foundational things about communication. But, you know, the question that you ask me, I don't know, like we have four days to record this, right?
Melanie Nicholson: [00:15:23] Yeah.
Michael Sondermann: [00:15:24] Oh, great. Awesome.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:15:25] It's an eight-series episode.
Michael Sondermann: [00:15:27] Okay. I'll be in six more of those. You know, how do you repair a culture? Well, it depends what the problem is, right? So once you do that root cause analysis, you start chipping away at what those root causes are. So what causes the dysfunction? Now, sometimes one of the things that you have to ask yourself is, can this be done? Should it be done? You know, if you have a situation which someone very close to me was dealing with, where they essentially found that there was a group of individuals creating an alternative reality that was demonizing someone at work, you know, why are you, like, do you spend any time repairing that or is this or is the repairing of that the severing of the employment relationship? Right? So people have to leave. One of the things that we make sure that we talk about if we're doing investigations, for example, into those kinds of things, is to ensure that whoever's remaining, that there's work done with them to to get them back because so many people who have been damaged at work are now gun-shy. So managers, if they've been abused are gun shy about managing anyone. You know, if you've been abused throughout a performance management process or with a boss, what is your willingness to work collaboratively and cooperatively with your next boss? So these are the reasons why getting to these root cause issues is really important, because if you don't address the root causes, you don't identify them. And then the issue will continue. And you can't repair someone in a workplace. So sometimes what we do is we'll remove someone from a workplace. But that doesn't mean the damage stops at that point.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:17:21] Because people feel broken and defeated and, I mean, having been in some of those environments. But I want to go back just because I'm a communications person, you were talking about communications, and one of the things that I think people forget as organizations is in this world of being terrified of something going on social media or getting out before they're ready to talk, people automatically go to cold statements and facts. And that's important but I think it's also so crucial from a risk management perspective, from a workplace culture perspective, is that compassion is in there as well. And empathy and understanding in your communication before you start listing the bullet points of this is what happened and these are the facts. I think there needs to be some semblance of connection because from my experience, when people are communicated, when I'm expressing concern and you're responding to me with a list of facts, do I feel heard? Not necessarily. And I think that's partly where the communications becomes a really big challenge in a culture that's already broken. And then you get that level of communication.
Michael Sondermann: [00:18:43] So, you know, you and I've talked about this in the past, right? You and I, if my recollection is correct, worked on some of these kinds of responses. Look, here's part of the problem. Who are you, if you're a communications person - so I'll speak to you and I'll speak to those people in your audience who are part of communications - I think that people who work in an organization where an event happens and let's say it becomes public, they would read a holding statement. Uh, and they would call bullshit on it regardless of the content of it.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:19:27] Absolutely.
Michael Sondermann: [00:19:27] But, and then, you know, so many holding statements or the, 'I'm sorry, but we can't comment on matters before the courts or in litigation' or something like that, 'We are aware of a complaint, we are working diligently', you know, whatever the statement is. But you hit the nose on the head or the, you hit something.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:19:47] Nail on the head? Nail on the head?
Michael Sondermann: [00:19:48] I'm not. I'm not into my idioms today. Um, listen, you had ultimately, you know, the way to have a really good workplace culture is to be empathetic all the time. Right? To understand that people in your organization would be different to you, they are allowed to think and feel differently about things so long as you're pulling in all the same direction. You really care about what your person's religion are or what their approach is to certain things. Right? Assuming those approaches are within workplace boundaries. But ultimately speaking, if you begin to create messages and crises without understanding that you're also communicating to those individuals in the crisis, you're missing the point, right? So too often what I find that communications professionals do wrong is they're communicating to the wider world without communicating to the people that are most impacted by what's...
Melanie Nicholson: [00:20:55] Absolutely. Because I think there's such a paranoia now about, well, I need to make sure that the wider world knows my holding statement. And there's more concern about that than let me talk to my person in the room and make sure they're okay and that they understand what's going on. And to me, that's become a huge problem from a communications perspective that's directly impacting these cultures.
Michael Sondermann: [00:21:20] Absolutely. And, you know, here's the problem that you, I think, and all other communication professionals know as well: You can be perfect in your communication and it's still misunderstood by people.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:21:32] I mean, that's the world we're living in. You live in a group of people and I say one sentence to ten people with the best of intentions and everyone's going to interpret it differently. And that's okay. It's just being open and understanding that that's going to happen.
Michael Sondermann: [00:21:46] Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is, you know, if you were to lead with a statement, for example, you know, 'Acme Widgets Corp puts safety and health of its employees before all else we are aware of' and then you go on to the rest right? Listen, if Acme investigates, does whatever they're going to do, and it doesn't go with what person ABC wants, person ABC will go, Well look at the crap that they're putting out, they don't really care anyway, right? So I think, so I think, you know, communicating - well, you know this - is almost impossible to communicate effectively to the right people. Not everybody is really happy about what they are being told. They're not happy with the outcome. You know, and you asked earlier about how do you repair culture? One of the more difficult things is when you go into a place where there's very little willingness based on unhappiness with change. Right? So, you know, one of the things that we have to be really attentive to is what is the willingness and the receptiveness of our audience.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:22:59] You mentioned change. How of all of the investigations and reparations that you have done, how often is change one of the root causes of strife in an organization? Where people just struggle with change, like does that come up a lot?
Michael Sondermann: [00:23:18] Yeah. Yeah, it does. And, um, you know, when I think it's a, for me anyway, what I've noticed is it's a little bit of an age-related and tenure-related thing that the older person has. The longer they've been in an organization, the more resistant they are to change and the more impactful change is on them. I think that younger people are a little bit more resilient in terms of change, largely because they drive so much of it. And I also think that younger generations are more comfortable living in a world of change, just simply because of the rate of change that they've experienced throughout the course of their lives, right? Whereas people...
Melanie Nicholson: [00:24:00] So different.
Michael Sondermann: [00:24:02] Sorry, people, you know, your older age, you know, it's a little bit slower back then. Right? And so, you know, I think that change is one of those fundamental things that people don't like. And there's a lot of elements to change, too, right? So is it, um, you know, we changed and I didn't get the job I should have gotten that I was entitled to? Is it oh my God, I'm worried about my job because of artificial intelligence? Is it change just because I just can't handle change at all? And you know, you're not at this point yet, but I'm going to tell you that, you know, once your kids become older and become adults, you know, this rate of change, you know, you become immersed in this rate of change and you can't escape the rate of change at work. And you're going home to deal with these teenagers and adults like just change all around you. And that's really stressful for some people. So it is the cause quite a bit of what we run into this as being root cause problems, of challenges to culture and workplaces.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:25:07] What can employers do right now if you were to give them 1 or 2 tangible things to do at their workplace so that they can avoid getting to the point where they need to have someone come in and investigate and rebuild? What is something that someone could do, change today, at their organization to rebuild a breaking culture?
Michael Sondermann: [00:25:33] So one of the things that I have been hugely impressed by is the number of leaders that I run across who aren't afraid to tackle that real issue and how many are not welcoming but are open to the possibility that some of this comes from them. Right? So first thing you should, well, the first thing you can do, ask your people what the problems are. Now, this is going to tell you a lot about your culture, because if you have no psychological safety, ain't no one telling you anything.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:26:15] I was just going to say, so if you get zero answers and everyone says things delightful, then you have a big problem?
Michael Sondermann: [00:26:23] Yeah, you have a huge problem. Listen, I think I have a way to develop this, right? Like, I think there's a way that you go and you resolve all of your problems, but it requires a lot of trust and faith in each other in an organization to do it. And one of the major ways that you do it is you put aside those prototypical job expectations that don't exist on paper in your job description. So no one at a company is expecting a boss to be bulletproof, genius, ascendant, flawless human being. No one expects their boss to know everything. So get rid of that. Open yourself up to the possibility that you have created some things or done some things that have prevented your organization from being where you want it to be. And then open up and ask the people in your place what the problems are. And more valuably, ask how they can be repaired. And in fact, you know, now that I said all of that, forget asking about what the problems are, just ask how they can be repaired, because everybody sort of knows what the problems are. Although some leaders don't, right, like if you know everybody's sort of on the same page, just say, listen, how are we going to get through this?
Melanie Nicholson: [00:28:05] And ultimately that's communicate with your people.
Michael Sondermann: [00:28:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I'm working with a client at the moment where things have gotten off the rails. So thankfully I'm working with people that have no ego, so they're like, We screwed up, I don't know how we got here. How do we get out? So what we're going to do, relatively small workgroup in a large organization, but it's nine people, so it's fairly substantial. I've done this with up to 117 people. We're going to spend a day and we're going to sit around a table and we're going to ask some very detailed, pointed questions. And what the leader has committed to doing is that the product at the end of those days is going to be the direction of that moving forward. So what have I just told you? I've just told you that the leader at the end of this - and the leader's taking part in this conversation, right, because everybody is an employee, everybody has the right to speak. The leader never has to get buy-in for this because it's the ten of them together that have created their future. Right? So, okay, everybody, what are the, where is the way forward? What are we going to do tomorrow and next week and then next month to fix where we're at, to improve where we're at? We're going to spend the day talking about this in a really collaborative way. They will co-create this future for themselves. You never once have to get buy-in. Right?
Melanie Nicholson: [00:29:54] That is amazing.
Michael Sondermann: [00:29:54] One of the strongest things that you can do. But in order to do that, a leader has to give up some control. Although I say to every leader, like I've been through this a lot, I've seen what workgroups come up with. Some really inventive kinds of things. Never have before has a group said, Well, we want the boss fired and we as a collective want to make every decision from here on in. Right? Everybody, everybody understands that boss is there for a purpose. Everybody understands, too, because we do some prep work to get them here, everybody understands, too, that there's an external environment around us that limits what we can do, creates that playing field at work. So we just can't say we need 64 more people. We can't conjure them out of thin air. So let's talk about what the playing field is, the boundaries of what we're doing, understand what's possible and in those boundaries co-create the vision for the future and what's the vision for the future? It's how do you want to be. It can be how you want it to be organized? How do you want to interact with each other? How do we, know what is the job function that each of us will do? And it's different for every engagement that I do because the problems are different every engagement. But you can sit down together as a collective and talk about this because ultimately your workplace is your workplace, regardless of what your rank is, what your title is, what your position is, and you should have the ability to contribute to that.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:31:29] And co-create a vision for the future. I love that so much. We started with when you get to a broken workplace, the mood. When you leave, and I know from talking to you some of these projects you're working on to support these companies are months and months and months, but when you reach a resolution and you get to that place of a repaired culture, what does it feel like, both for you and for the people there?
Michael Sondermann: [00:31:59] So, you know, it depends, right, completely on the workplace. But generally speaking, what you hear and what I can see, I can see the temperature in a room drop. So I had an engagement where when I walked in I sat in front of the staff and heard what the problems were. It was a little bit like I was sitting in a gale-force wind and I was getting blown backwards and it was 150 degrees in that room. It was so uncomfortable. When I walk in there now, it's normal conversation. And even those things that are super passionate about and really emotional about related to work, it's a completely different level. So you can have a palpable sense that the place is just different. Individuals will tell you that they are being heard for the first time ever or for the first time in a long time, that they feel valued. You see conversations happen between different levels of an organization that you weren't seeing before. So, you know, I tell leaders, if I'm coaching someone, for example, you know, you have to talk to your people. You have to talk to them all the time. And sort of a perfect work meeting is two thirds, one third - two thirds business, and then the other third let's talk about hockey, fishing, your kids, you know, flying to Spain, what's the cool things that you've done? Get to know them as individuals. I've walked into some places where, you know, the leaders sit on one side and staff sit on the other and never speak. And so what you begin to see is as the time goes on, they'll walk in together or they'll leave together.
Michael Sondermann: [00:33:55] And they're beginning to have those two thirds, one third conversations. And at the end of the day, what you'll see as a leader from this, are a whole host of things that you probably never would have thought that you would see in terms of being able to quantify. So you're going to get less time off, you're going to have less requests for sick leave, you're going to have fewer people booking off, you know, those days, you know, if you're in a union environment and everybody gets ten sick days, oftentimes what you're going to see is not everybody's taking ten. You're going to see a different approach to work. You're going to see people coming up with solutions on their own because they're going to talk to you about, and they feel safe about, coming up with alternatives. You're going to see that you are more productive. You are going to see that the people in your organization, if it's a workgroup in an organization, you're going to find out that you're easier to deal with, that you get along more seamlessly with those other work organizations. Your clients and your customers are going to see that you are easier to deal with because every day they're dealing with engaged people who feel valued in their jobs. And it doesn't matter what your job is, it doesn't matter what your job title is, people sense if they're dealing with people who are engaged. So those are some of the things that we see as we work with clients and customers. And, you know, we never go in there and say at the end of this, you will experience nirvana. We're not going to dance. We're not going to sing Kumbaya together. But you will see these small moves towards things. And they are small moves because as you said, you know, like some of our engagement are months or years, because very rarely do we get called in to fix something that just happened yesterday. Right?
Melanie Nicholson: [00:35:58] It's been simmering for years, probably.
Michael Sondermann: [00:36:00] Years. So one of the things that I say to leaders, you know, one of your jobs is to when you find out this is happening, is to stop. And if you haven't for five years, part of this is on you and you have to wear it. But, you know, if it's been simmering for five years, you can't change it in five days. Probably aren't going to change it in five months either. Right?
Melanie Nicholson: [00:36:27] But I think the key is that it's never too late to make a change of a culture. And I think that's what I hope people take away, is that we do not have to accept that the workplace is toxic and that's just the nature of the beast. I think we need to get out of that headspace because I've been there too, where we just all were like, Well, this is what it is, which is horrible. And now I look at it very different where it's, it didn't have to be that way. And change can start at any point. So I hope, um, employers can see that. Thank you so much for shining some insights onto this and to sharing some of your stories. And I hope people can take this information and apply it directly. So I really appreciate the conversation today.
Michael Sondermann: [00:37:17] You're welcome. Thanks for having me, Mel.
Melanie Nicholson: [00:37:21] Thank you, Michael, for joining us today. I think the biggest takeaway that employers need to hear from today is that it is not too late. If your culture feels broken or toxic and is struggling, it is not too late to make a change. Michael, thank you so much. I mentioned in the intro, if you're an employer and you haven't yet listened to our conversation with Jennifer Berard about trauma-informed workplaces, I highly recommend you tune into that episode as well. Thank you so much for listening. Please like, subscribe and consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. We'll catch you next time on Its a Theory.