Take a moment to check in with your body—yeah, right now! Do you feel tension in your shoulders? A clench in your jaw? A heaviness in your chest? Those feelings have something to tell us—and it’s time we tuned into them at work, says Alla Weinberg.
Take a moment to check in with your body—yeah, right now! Do you feel tension in your shoulders? A clench in your jaw? A heaviness in your chest? Those feelings have something to tell us—and it’s time we tuned into them at work, says Alla Weinberg.
Alla Weinberg is a work relationship expert and culture designer who coaches teams and leaders to build relationship intelligence skills, create cultures of safety and trust, and move past toxic work environments. She's also the author of A Culture of Safety: Building Environments Where People Can Think, Collaborate, and Innovate.
What needs to change: we have to shift from this mechanistic mindset around work that people are cogs in a machine, or resources, or capital, and understand that we are biological creatures that get sick, that have chemical hormonal changes in our bodies, that have emotions, that are messy, honestly, in a lot of ways we're very messy, and design around that piece. That we have differences in ability in how we think, in how we function and start from that place. Because everything was designed around the idea that people are machines, and we're not.
—Alla Weinberg, author, A Culture of Safety
We talk about:
Plus: in this week’s You’ve Got This, Sara walks us through how to do a body scan. For more on using this tool to release tension and feelings in our bodies, head over to https://www.activevoicehq.com/podcast.
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Alla Weinberg 0:00 People are living with an increased amount of fear because there's an increased amount of uncertainty in our world. Are we going to go back to the office? Is this going to be hybrid? Is my role going to continue? Because we don't talk about feelings enough in the workplace, the burnout comes from emotional exhaustion.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 0:29 Hello, and welcome to Strong Feelings, the podcast all about the messy world of being a human at work. I'm your host, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, and today I'm talking with someone I'm so excited about: Alla Weinberg. She's a work relationship expert, which yes, it's absolutely a real thing, and something a lot more teams could use. And she's here to talk about one of my most favorite topics, which is safety at work. So many of the conversations I've had recently in my coaching work and in my group programs have been about what happens when people don't have safety at work. And some of its really extreme like, I wish this weren't true, but more than one person recently has told me a horrifying story of being straight up screamed at, like, verbally abused by an executive. But there are also a lot more subtle things that erode people's safety. I had a client who told me about a peer who always pipes up after they speak to play devil's advocate, not to improve their ideas, not to bring in a new perspective, just to undermine them. Or someone who had been handling their PTO the same way for a year and then was suddenly blindsided by their manager questioning their plans at the last minute. Those little moments can add up to pervasive feelings of being off-kilter, and uncertain, and just plain scared.
1:41 And you know, the same is true for me personally. I had some pretty unsafe workplace experiences back when I worked for a regular company. There were times when I felt physically unsafe, like when a creepy vendor kept trying to get me to go to his hotel room at a conference in the middle of the night. No. Gross. But also, there were so many times where I just felt this pervasive sense of danger at work, not usually physical danger, but psychological danger. I would be scared to walk into a meeting with my boss who was a company founder because I didn't really trust him to listen to me, I didn't trust him not to pull the rug out from under me. I felt like me and my team, actually all the teams were always kind of being monitored, like the general vibe was one of distrust, of assuming that people weren't going to pull their weight unless you were watching all the time.
2:27 And I knew that sucked at the time, but what I didn't quite see back then was how much that was affecting me beyond just the general day-to-day unpleasantness. Because the result was really that I was leading myself from a place of fear; I would be afraid that someone would suddenly decide that one of my team members wasn't performing and then make me fire them. Or, I was afraid that we wouldn't hit our goals, and I'd be blamed. It was just fear, fear, fear all the time. And you know what? Managing from a place of fear is not good management. You really can't help people grow or help other people feel a sense of purpose or connection to their work if you're constantly playing a chess game in your head that's all about avoiding danger.
3:10 And it didn't just affect me in that job either. It actually shaped some of the ways that I learned to lead more broadly, left me more distrustful than I want to be, made me less likely to delegate things when I needed to. And that really went on for years. It wasn't until much later when I actually studied team dysfunction, understood psychological safety, and also unpacked a whole bunch of my own trauma, and my own experiences, and my own responses to all of that that I was able to start doing some things differently. And so that is why I'm so excited to talk to Alla because everybody deserves to feel safer at work. And there are things that each of us can do for our own safety and also to support others' safety. And you can probably start doing those things a lot faster than I did.
SWB 3:58 Alla Weinberg is a work relationship expert and the author of "A Culture of Safety: Building Environments Where People Can Think, Collaborate, and Innovate." Her work coaching teams and leaders helps people build relationship intelligence skills, create cultures of safety and trust and move past toxic work environments. Alla, I'm a big fan of yours. Welcome to Strong Feelings.
AW 4:18 Thank you so much for having me.
SWB 4:20 So I want to start out with talking a bit about the book: "A Culture of Safety." I got it when it first came out, which was beginning of 2021?
AW 4:27 That's right.
SWB 4:27 Yeah. So I recommend it to people all the time. I found it really helpful. And I particularly recommend it to managers. Can you tell folks a little bit about it?
AW 4:36 Yes, absolutely. So this is a very practical book specifically aimed at managers and leaders who are very caring about their team. And a lot of leaders that I speak with, they would call themselves, like, servant-leaders, and they want to create, what they tell me, is psychological safety on the team. And the reason they want to create psychological safety on the team is so folks can be more imaginative. And I work with a lot of designers, right? So they can be more imaginative, more innovative, bring their whole selves to work, to have good debate, right? Share really diverse ideas. And folks ask me, "How do you do that?" And this is the book that addresses that. And it starts with how do you have to show up as a leader first, in order to be able to create that kind of environment, and then practices that you can do as a team to start to build up safety on your team.
SWB 5:28 I love that it starts with kind of tuning inward, and how do you make yourself the kind of leader who can actually do this? I think that gets skipped over a lot for looking externally. So when you think about that, where does it start, that process of becoming the kind of leader who can create safety for a team?
AW 5:45 I think it starts with leaders and managers really acknowledging and understanding that one, they're human beings. And what that means is that as human beings, we're scared every single day. We have fear, and we experience fear every single day, whether we're aware of it or not. And that our job as a leader is to know how to manage that fear, and there are practices in the book that I write about how to do that, specifically, is to manage those fears, so that we're not leading. And we're not managing from a fear-based perspective. And therefore, there's no possible way we could create safety if those are the actions that we're taking, the place we're coming from.
SWB 6:22 Mhmm. When you talk about safety, what I really like is the way you kind of break down psychological safety; you can't start with "I want it to be psychologically safe." You actually say, you know, "We need to start with physical safety as a building block, and then emotional safety, and I'm wondering if you can tell us more about that. So what is physical safety? And then why do we have to start there?
AW 6:41 Yeah, I'm going to actually backtrack a little bit and say, "What is safety?” to begin with. And then that will lead into why we need physical safety. Safety is a state of our autonomic nervous system. And our nervous system, especially the autonomic nervous system, is responsible for all the unconscious functions of our body like heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, all the things we don't have to think about. But it's also this giant sensor in our body that's constantly checking to make sure that we can survive as people, that our bodies physically will survive. So it's constantly checking for threats, and we've evolved in order to be able to do that. And so physical safety has to happen first in order to have safety, to have psychological safety, because safety is a state of our autonomic nervous system. So if we feel physically safe, meaning our physical bodies are not under threat in any way, they're valued, they're respected, they're included, then that's a step towards getting to psychological safety, which is when our ideas are heard, and included, and considered.
SWB 7:46 Yeah, I think this is so important. I've had all these conversations with leaders who want psychological safety and go straight to vulnerable disclosure, like, "Oh, I want to create safety, so I'm going to have everybody connect as humans by sharing intimate and personal information about themselves and others." It's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Hold on."
AW 8:07 Yes, jumping the gun there.
SWB 8:09 That's something you might be able to do once you have safety, potentially. But if you start there, there's gonna be a lot of people who just shut down.
AW 8:17 Yes.
SWB 8:18 So what does it look like to create more, first, physical safety for folks?
AW 8:21 What it looks like is, at least as a group or as a team, to start to have awareness about our physicality. So in the book, I write about this exercise where it's a ritual that you can do in any meeting, where you go around the room, and all you share is how you're feeling from a sensation level in your body. So I could be feeling tight in this moment in my shoulders, I could feel a clenching in my stomach, I might have heat in my face. That's it. That's all you share. There's no story around it. It's just for each member to get to understand, "Okay, I have a body. It's not just a head that floats around from meeting to meeting. I have a body. I know what my body feels like, and I know what my body feels like in relationship to other people. How am I feeling right now in my body, physically, from a sensation level, with the people in this room?" Because all of those signals are your nervous system telling you, "Hey, either I feel calm and relaxed, or something's getting tight. I might be preparing to mobilize, so go into fight-or-flight mode." And so all of those signals are constantly there; we're just so disconnected from it on a daily basis. We're just all in our heads thinking about it. So everyone sharing that experience of getting into our bodies and speaking that to each other is a great first step to building physical safety.
SWB 9:43 You know, I think that leads us right into then talking about this other building block of emotional safety.
AW 9:47 Yes.
SWB 9:47 Since, you know, reconnecting with your body helps you then know, like, "What am I even feeling?" And you talked about this in the book that workplace culture is not necessarily a place where people are used to talking about feelings.
AW 9:58 Yes.
SWB 9:58 My experience has been it's very common to hear this kind of like, "Well, we're rational here. Leave your feelings at the door. Emotions don't belong here. That's not how we make decisions." Which is a lie.
AW 10:08 Complete lie.
SWB 10:09 Because humans are emotional creatures just end-to-end. But as a result of that sort of reluctance to engage at the level of feelings, it seems like we just miss so much.
AW 10:18 Yes.
SWB 10:19 Yeah. So what does it look like to create emotional safety?
AW 10:21 So emotional safety is the ability again, within a group or a team for people, to be able to share any emotion and be validated in that emotion rather than dismissed or even just saying like, "That's not even appropriate to talk about this certain emotion." Why it's important is, again, very biological: when we're able to share our emotions with a group of people, that creates social connectedness and a sense of belonging. So people are like, "Oh, I want to create belonging. I want to have diversity, inclusion, and belonging.” You can't have belonging if you can't have those social connections. And you get those social connections through emotional connection, through sharing of how you're feeling emotionally. And there should never be a like "this is off the table." And what's really unfortunate is that some emotions are not okay for some groups of people to express, right? So it's okay, for example, for a white man to express anger, whereas a Black woman or a Black man, it's not okay to do that. It's okay for white women to cry, but not for men to cry. But we're, again, all human beings, and we should be allowed. And it should be safe to express anything that we're feeling with each other. And somebody else says, just...simply validate, you say like, "Yes, you know, what you're going through is hard, and your experience is true. And there's nothing that I'm going to do to try to convince you otherwise."
11:47 I've actually had a colleague recently message me saying they left a company, because a leader did run one of these kind of sessions like, "Oh, tell us how you feel." And she did. And then eventually, then she got feedback saying, "Well, your feelings are wrong." That's impossible. Your feelings cannot be wrong. That is the experience you're having. There's no possible way feelings could be wrong.
SWB 12:09 You know, I've heard similar things a lot. And I've also heard people do that to themselves, like, "Oh, I shouldn't be angry, though." Right? And I think so often, what we get mixed together is the emotion and then like, what is the behavior around the emotion or the story we're telling around the emotion? And so you are responsible for what you do with your feelings. The feeling just happens. So nobody can take it from you.
AW 12:31 The feeling is there.
SWB 12:32 Yeah.
AW 12:33 Yeah, the feeling is there.
SWB 12:35 So what does it look like for people to get more in touch with some of the feelings they have? Like, so for example, I know lots of groups of people of color, and particularly Black people in America, and then I think I would say women, generally speaking, have received a lot of messages about not appearing "angry." Something I've seen happen is then those groups will sometimes even feel disconnected from their own feeling of anger. It's like hard to identify that that's what they're feeling because they've been encouraged to just not feel that and make sure they don't express that. So how do we get more into that place where we can understand what we're feeling in a moment? And then what do we do with it?
AW 13:10 I think the best way to get to understand what you're feeling goes back to physical safety. So a feeling, an emotion is actually the sensation in your body. So I described how do you develop physical safety. You name the sensations. What I'm actually asking you to name are your feelings. So at the core level, feelings aren't the label we give them. It's not just like, "Oh, I feel sad." But the feelings are the physical sensation that you're feeling, which is, "Oh, I have a heaviness on my chest," which you could potentially label as "sad," you know. And so both are necessary: what's the sensation, but then building your emotional vocabulary, the actual words to describe how you're feeling, and starting to use that in conversation. And you can use bot the sensation word and the emotion word in conversation.
13:59 So I'll give an example. So maybe you're having a conversation about a project, and you're actually worried about the direction that was proposed. You could start to say, "When I heard you say that, my stomach clenched, and I realized, I feel scared about the direction this project is heading." You can even go lighter; you can say, "I feel concerned, I feel worried about the way this project is going." And so to the best of your ability in the moment, what's going on for you physically? What's the label? And then just say that. Nobody has to fix anything, but it's being much more vulnerable and transparent in that moment, and therefore creating social ties in connection with people.
SWB 14:43 When you talk about that, that sort of being able to be in tune with that feeling and having a feeling like "scared," I think about how many workplaces where that's kind of unexpected or unwelcome. So what does it look like to make those feelings more welcome? Like, what does it look like to make that explicitly acceptable on a team?
AW 15:01 I think there's a misconception amongst folks around safety, specifically in that safety has to exist first before I can start to share some of these things like my feelings. But that is also the way safety gets created. And so, you can use lighter words. You don't have to be like, "I'm terrified of this project direction." You can say, "I'm concerned, I'm worried." Just very gently starting to bring it into everyday conversation. It doesn't have to be a big like, "Okay, now we're changing the culture. And this is the big reveal. And this is how we're going to talk from now on." In these small moments, start to bring that in. And once you do, this is what I've seen happen over and over again, it gives other people permission to do that, too. And this is what I've heard people say: "Oh, I don't know how I'm feeling about this. Wait, give me a second." And then they check in. And then they say, "Actually, I'm feeling pretty, you know, excited about the direction. And here's why." And a different level of conversation begins to open up as a result.
SWB 16:06 You know, thinking a lot about this conversation around safety and this conversation around feelings, and thinking about them in relation to the past year-and-a-half plus of pandemic periods, right, like where it is a time of a lot of burnout, a lot of people experiencing extreme stress. And I would say trauma is a major issue that's not getting talked about enough.
AW 16:29 Yes.
SWB 16:30 How have you seen those things impacting people's sense of safety, and also how teams can rebound or respond to that?
AW 16:40 Well, in my book, when I talk about stress, I say that stress is a euphemism for fear. And I still believe that. Like, I stand by my words. I still believe that. And so, people are living with an increased amount of fear because there's an increased amount of uncertainty in our world: "are we going to go back to the office? Is this going to be hybrid? Is my role going to continue? Oh, another reorg." Because we don't talk about feelings enough in the workplace, the burnout comes from emotional exhaustion. A lot of it comes from emotional exhaustion, and the stress and the fear that we're carrying around, but not really processing, not really talking about it. And I've actually spoken to several leaders who said, oh, now their one-on-ones have turned into therapy sessions, where, you know, they're talking to their reports, and all of it is about just how exhausted, how sad, how tired, everyone is at this point.
17:36 And I feel a little cautious here because I absolutely want leaders and managers to leave space for people to express their feelings and validate people's feelings; that's emotional safety. And I think it is also important to know your own limit as a manager and as a leader about what kind of help you can provide because I think there can be a lot of harm done to people if you're not professionally trained to deal with mental and emotional health, and you're going into that territory with people at work. And so it's also knowing, "Hey, actually, some professional help will be good here." The second question: how teams can cope with it is to understand that is not actually an individual issue. I think a lot of companies are like, "Oh, meditate more, take more walks, or, you know, do self-care." But that is a systemic thing. And we have to look at how, again, this is cultural, like, how are we working together as a team that is causing burnout, that is causing extra burden or harm to people? And what can we change? And the big thing that people can change is to start having more conversations as a team about how folks are feeling and having more check-ins and not just, like, a five minute thing, but an entire meeting just focused on that. And knowing you're not alone and feeling validated and supported in that.
SWB 18:56 I'm wondering, you know, we talked a little bit about how people can end up not feeling safe physically in their workplaces, and some groups feeling less physically safe in their workplaces. And I'm wondering if we can dig into that a little bit more because I know you've talked in the past a little bit about things like workplaces not being designed for women or others who can menstruate or get pregnant and how that erodes safety from sort of like the ground level. Can we go there?
AW 19:21 Let's go there. I'm a bit nervous to go there. But let's go there.
SWB 19:24 No, no, no. I think it's time to go there. So yeah, let's talk about this. Let's talk about how workplaces create lack of safety for some groups.
AW 19:33 You know, as I've been writing the book, and talking about it, and working with teams, the more I think about it, the more I realized that workplaces, especially knowledge work, which came out of the Industrial Revolution, was never designed for women's bodies. And by "women," I mean women and people that menstruate or can get pregnant. It was never designed for those kinds of bodies because at least American society was structured in such a way that women would be at home caretaking and men would be at work. And when that dynamic changed, nothing changed about the workforce to accommodate women and women's bodies, and we functionally biologically have different things happening for us. A lot of it actually has to do with how painful it often is to be in our bodies for women and people that menstruate. Like, it's very painful. But we have to pretend at work that none of that exists, that we are not in pain. We basically have to pretend that we're men.
SWB 20:35 Make it invisible.
AW 20:36 Make it invisible. And that feels painful to me to say. Even like, that hurts me to say that out loud.
SWB 20:43 I mean, if you break your arm, you don't have to pretend your arm's not broken at work.
AW 20:47 Yeah.
SWB 20:47 Why do you have to pretend you don't have cramps, right? Or morning sickness or whatever the thing is.
AW 20:52 Yes.
SWB 20:53 Yeah. And I think this comes back to something we kind of touched on even around emotions. It's like, there are some emotions that are "professional" and some that are "unprofessional."
AW 20:59 Yeah.
SWB 20:59 And like, "stress" is a way we talk about emotion that is "professional," even though it's not very useful or true. But then here, too, it's like, okay, which bodily functions and which needs are professional and which are considered unprofessional? And like hmm?
AW 21:15 Anything to do with women's bodily function is completely unprofessional. We don't have conversations about this at work. We don't have policies about it at work. We don't have any support or accommodations about it at work.
SWB 21:27 We don't have tampons in the bathroom.
AW 21:28 We don't have tampons in the bathroom minimally. Right?
SWB 21:33 Yeah. And so when you think about that, when you think about sort of the impact that that creates, and it's not just around something like periods, or even just around pregnancy, it's like, there's this whole ecosystem of experiences that are just not acceptable. Like, I think about friends I know who've really tried to, like, hide and minimize the fact that they were, say, needing to pump breast milk at work, for example, right? So there's like all these related experiences. When that gets erased, or has to be hidden, what does that do to a team? What does that do to those people who are doing all that erasing and hiding?
AW 22:07 Well, when we don't have physical safety, and that's why it's number one thing, our body biologically will take resources away from the parts of our brain that can think and will redirect it to our survival. That's what our body is designed to do. It's designed to keep us alive. And so if you're somebody who is facing these physical challenges, but you're minimizing it, and honestly, a lot of these physical challenges translate into emotional challenges. So a personal story, I had very severe postpartum anxiety, because my hormones were very much out of balance after having a baby. And they've actually never gone back to normal. I have to have medication to manage it. But I was feeling a lot of anxiety, just emotional anxiety, and I was very uncontrollable. And as a result, there's no way I can be as productive, I can think as clearly, I can make as good decisions, I can be innovative, because our IQ literally drops when our body's like, "We're in survival mode. We don't have to think right now; all we need to do is run or fight at this point." And so when we're mobilized in that way, we don't have full access to our prefrontal cortex and yet are expected to perform at certain levels that don't take our biology into account.
SWB 23:28 Well, what I hear in there too is that there's so many workplaces that not just expect you to perform as if those things aren't happening, but actually, like, serve to heighten that anxiety and make all of those things worse, versus creating a space where it's easier for you to actually cope.
AW 23:42 Yes.
SWB 23:43 Yeah, it reminds me of this concept I think about a lot around, you know, all that time that you might spend dealing with, like, the bias you experience in the world, or like time spent dealing with, say, processing and healing from trauma from an abusive scenario. I think of that as like, time theft.
AW 24:00 Right.
SWB 24:00 Like, what's been taken from me, what has been taken from folks? Like, what could they have done with that?
AW 24:06 So much.
SWB 24:06 Literally anything.
AW 24:07 So much.
SWB 24:08 Even just like sleep, right? Like anything, literally anything else.
AW 24:11 Yeah.
SWB 24:11 I think of it as a theft.
AW 24:13 I agree. And I think when we have to minimize/hide this, it actually creates more fear in our system. It does not create a sense of safety in our autonomic nervous system. Our nervous system is like, "Oh my gosh, at any moment, I'm going to die." So there's absolutely no space left for creating, for bringing your whole self, for doing all the things that are possible because you're spending all this energy hiding who you are as a biological human being.
SWB 24:44 When you think about that, you think about all of these workplace scenarios that have been basically the same since the '50s.
AW 24:50 Right.
SWB 24:50 In terms of office structure, basically the same since the '50s. Like, I don't know fewer secretaries, more tech, but otherwise, schedules are the same. Expectations in a lot of ways about what is a professional and what does that look like are the same. What do you want to see change that would actually accommodate the reality of not just women and other people with, you know, uteruses, but also, like, people who have disabilities or people who aren't white, which also was not part of the professional class of the '50s, you know?
AW 25:20 Or neurotypical.
SWB 25:21 Or neurotypical. Yeah, like what needs to change to kind of actually accommodate these things at a broader level?
AW 25:26 What needs to change: we have to shift from this mechanistic mindset around work that people are cogs in a machine, or resources, or capital, and understand that we are biological creatures that get sick, that have chemical hormonal changes in our bodies, that have emotions, that are messy, honestly, in a lot of ways we're very messy, and design around that piece. That we have differences in ability in how we think, in how we function and start from that place. Because everything was designed around the idea that people are machines, and we're not.
SWB 26:11 That's a big, big call. Like, the big thing to change, right? And yes, yes, okay, make the big change. We gotta make the big change. At a really practical day-to-day level, you also say something in the book that has stuck with me about how if you change your meetings, you change your culture. Can we talk a little bit about meetings? Because I think that's a really practical place a lot of people can make change.
AW 26:30 Yes.
SWB 26:31 Yeah. So what makes that such an important site for either building or eroding safety?
AW 26:35 Yes. So the reason I really honed in on meetings and rituals, as that kind of lever to pull specifically, is because that's the point where we come together and we relate to each other. That's the point where people come together and relate to each other in certain ways. For me, the definition of culture is the outcome or the result of how people relate to each other. And so if we change how that works, we change the culture. And here's the big change that I want to see is I want people to start to relate to each other in this very human way. So instead of like the entire meeting just being about what needs to get done, what's the task? What's the decision? Okay, we start to socially connect with each other, we tell each other how we're feeling. We talk about potentially physical things that are bothering us or are present for us. And we also share, hopefully, novel or innovative ideas together. And so changing the way that we relate to each other and what is okay, the ways it might be okay to relate to each other at work, which aren't currently, is I feel like the quickest way to start really seeing that change.
SWB 27:46 Yeah, so speaking of that, it comes back to something we talked about before. I think I mentioned that I've definitely seen leaders try to kind of shortcut to that by going immediately really deep on like, "Let's get super vulnerable." You know, "We're going to talk about childhood trauma today." They don't say it that way, but that's kind of what they're asking, right?
AW 28:03 Right. Right. Right.
SWB 28:04 And that's a lot.
AW 28:05 That's a lot.
SWB 28:06 Yeah, so that's a lot. So how do you get to a place where you can maybe work your way up? Like, what are some lower risk ways to get started with that, that also kind of allow people to have some consent and like, kind of choose how much they're comfortable sharing right now?
AW 28:23 Right. I think this is key is that people have to be in choice. If you want to create safety, it has to be a choice that people make. If it's not a choice, it's no longer safe. There's no way to create safety. So if you have to share something vulnerable, then you're no longer in a safe environment. And so as a leader or manager, it's really important to assess what is the safety or maturity level of safety in your organization. If you've never spoken about feelings, and then you goal is to ask somebody about their childhood trauma, that's way, way overdoing it. Too far. So maybe start with something smaller, like, "Okay, you're kicking off an initiative or a project, let's talk about your hopes for this project and your concerns about this project." Super easy, lightweight, like everybody already has them in their head. Let's just get it out and talk about that. I call concerns "fears," but you know, let's go lighter. Let's just call it concerns. You don't have to get to fears. After a while, just adding in a couple of these kinds of rituals, just doing this for a little while, the group's nervous system will be like "Yeah, this is what we do. It's normal. It's okay. I can feel relaxed about it." And then at that point, take it up a notch. "Okay, well, let's now talk about boundaries. What kind of boundaries do we need as a team? And what kind of boundaries do you need as an individual?" Now there's a little bit more, I would say softness, openness to talking about that.
29:52 And it's never done. This is, I think what I write in the book, it's like creating a culture of safety is not like, "Oh, people speak up in meetings. We're done. Check. We're done. Okay. Going to the next thing." It's something that you continue to build, and you can continue to increase the level of connectedness, the level of sharing over time. And the thing about relationships and about building culture, because culture is an outcome of relationships, is it does take time. I mean, minimally, to actually get psychological safety, what I've seen is minimally will take six months to a year to really get there. And that's at the base level. But then you go up another level, and you can go up another level from there. And so start slow, start closer in, and know that the pace of that is going to be much slower than you think, or want, or feel comfortable with. And that's, again, where you as a leader have to manage your fears, and really know how to work with that so that you don't push the team too far, too hard.
SWB 30:48 I love that. And I love this message of like, you have to trust people to decide how far they want to go right now, and then give them time to kind of work their way up. You don't get to choose what they're ready for.
AW 31:00 You do not get to choose.
SWB 31:01 Yeah.
AW 31:01 But you get to meet them where they are, and honor that.
SWB 31:04 You know, in talking about this, I think one of the things that's so clear to me is how little time is often spent in teams or in organizations having these sort of, I would say, meta-conversations like about our team relationship, and not just about the work, but about the feelings around the work. And I'm wondering, you know, how do you communicate to maybe leaders who are skeptical or just haven't done this before, that that is valuable, that that is a real and tangible need for people to actually exist in these teams effectively?
AW 31:36 Honestly, there's already been a bunch of studies—Google Aristotle Project, Amy Edmondson—that have spoken to this. Especially the Google Aristotle Project, where they found that the makeup of the individuals on the team had absolutely no correlation to the performance or effectiveness of the team, but that how people work together was the indicator of effectiveness on the team. And so honestly, there's already...I don't have to do a lot of convincing because there's a lot of research already on there. And then I say, "We need to talk and reflect and be aware of how we're working together, how it's feeling on the team, the dynamics on the team." And a lot of the services that I provide people, because they don't have this skill, is to go in and observe, and do interviews, and then name the dynamics on the team. So the leader can actually see "Oh, this is what's going on." Because sometimes if you're part of the team, if you're in the water, it's hard to see what water you're swimming in. And so having somebody come in and be able to actually name what's going on, and it's often complex, and multifaceted, and messy, because that's what we are as human beings, just brings relief, so much relief to the team, because they're like, "Oh, now we know what's going on, we can actually affect change around that."
SWB 32:50 Yeah, I think that it is so common to kind of go through the motions. And you know, things aren't right, or they're not working well, or people are upset, or there's tension, or people are venting a lot. But this processing piece, and this sort of like being able to name it, that's so powerful. If somebody is listening today, and they're like, "I need to get a little bit more of this in my life," where can they learn more about you and your work?
AW 33:16 They can go to my website, which is https://www.spokeandwheel.co/ and you can also purchase my book on Amazon. And I do post a lot on LinkedIn, just these kinds of thoughts or suggestions, I post a lot on LinkedIn.
SWB 33:34 You do. And I will say everybody Alla is a good follow on LinkedIn, definitely do that. And definitely get a copy of "A Culture of Safety." Alla, thank you so much for talking about the book with us.
AW 33:43 Thank you.
SWB 33:52 So, Alla, we've talked a lot about your work, and about the book, and I want to switch gears a little bit and talk a bit about your personal experience leading up into this book, and I know, you came out of academia, and then you worked in design, and then you got into coaching and leadership work. What led you down this path, though, of thinking about safety?
AW 34:13 Well, I stayed in academia for a long time because I was honestly scared to go into the workforce. I heard all of these stories, especially about how women were treated in the workforce and sexism and misogyny in there. And I was like, "Oh, I don't want that." And honestly, academia is rife with its own issues in politics. But as a student I was sort of shielded from it, and eventually I reached the end of all the academia that I could do. And once I entered the workforce, I mean, even starting from my first job, I immediately started to experience, I think, what a lot of women experience in tech, are these kind of emotionally abusive moments at work: so managers yelling at me until I cried. Walking into an all-male room, and then the room suddenly going silent because a minute before they were looking at nude pictures together.
SWB 35:07 Cool.
AW 35:08 Yeah. Like, projected onto the screen.
SWB 35:13 Oh, great.
AW 35:14 Yeah. You know, obviously not getting paid equally to men.
SWB 35:18 Been there.
AW 35:18 And not getting the promotion because I wasn't the hot girl, and that's who they wanted as the face for, like, specific clients. I didn't have a specific look associated. And it's funny because before I even came into this interview, I was like, "Oh, I don't even know. Like nothing's happened to me." And then I sat down, and I thought about it. And I was like, "Holy moly, there's so much that has happened for me." And what led me to the book was my very last experience, and I alluded to it in the last segment, is that I was working in an HR department. Okay? So this is the key: I was working in an HR department, and I had a baby. And after having a baby, I had severe postpartum anxiety. And I came back to work. And it was so incredibly unsupportive, even though both my managers were women.
36:08 And I think this is the important thing is that even as women, as we get promoted into higher level positions, we start to take on, basically patriarchy, and white supremacy, and all of those actions because that's how you become successful at work. And so what that looked like for me was there was, a male colleague in that department—was not even on my team, was on a different team—decided to walk around and write down all the things that he thought I was doing wrong, and provide that as "feedback" to my manager. Never to me directly, but as feedback to my manager, and so actively undermining me. And when I talked to my manager about it, they said, "Well, it's a "He Said, She Said thing." And it wasn't because he was the one actually bringing this to my manager. So it just felt like they were protecting him. And I see this often, I would say, cis white men get protected in the workplace. And they don't protect people from historically oppressed groups. And after that, I felt so physically unsafe, I quit. And I started my own company. And I wrote a book because I said, for me, this is my life's work, and I may never see the fruits of it. But this is my life's work, because I want to see the workplace change so that everyone does feel safe, so they can actually do a good job and make an impact in the world.
SWB 37:32 Yeah, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry, that happened to you. That sounds incredibly painful in a moment of your life where it was just the opposite of what you needed.
AW 37:40 Yeah.
SWB 37:41 Right, in a moment of your life where you were already going through something challenging.
AW 37:44 It was actually a very vulnerable moment in my life. And I just felt just completely unsupported. And I went to therapy to try to help process that because I needed to. It was a very traumatic experience for me.
SWB 37:58 I mean, what I'm hearing here is that it's not even just unsupported. It's like, you were surveilled.
AW 38:03 Yeah.
SWB 38:04 What a way to make somebody feel unsafe who's already anxious and struggling.
AW 38:08 Don't do that.
SWB 38:09 Don't do that. Okay. Okay. So in addition to not doing that, I'm sure there are people out there listening who've had similar or otherwise terrible workplace experiences that were sexist, that were racist, that were ableist, etc. And I'm wondering, you know, for folks who are looking at those experiences, and kind of thinking, like, "How do I move on from this?" I'm wondering, as you look back, you know, someone on the other side, right, like, you've got some distance from it, it sounds like you've done a lot of work to heal from it. How did you start that healing process? And what would you offer to somebody who's still going through it?
AW 38:42 Honestly, I did get help. Like, I went to therapy, and I got help. And I did therapy and coaching simultaneously, in that I wanted to heal, but I also wanted to know how to move forward and what to do. And this is how I made meaning out of my traumatic experiences: writing this book. And it was, in some ways, almost therapeutic to me to write it. And I think that the key here is to find help, but also to find other people that have gone through a similar thing because I really want people to know that they're not alone. This is not an isolated incident by any stretch of the imagination, and that it's not your fault. I think what I did, you know, right after that incident, and what a lot of people do is start to blame themselves, "Oh, what did I do wrong? Or what could I have done different? Or what's wrong with me that I wasn't supported in any way, or protected, or even treated harmfully? Like, what did I do to deserve that kind of treatment?" Nothing, you didn't do anything wrong. And that's the key understanding to get to.
SWB 39:49 Yeah.
AW 39:49 I couldn't do it by myself. Like, I went to therapy. I got help and joined a community of women, you know, that are professionals, that are entrepreneurs, and we are such, again, biologically such social creatures, we need that community support. And I mean, luckily, there's a lot available online regarding whatever issue or circumstance that you're going through that other folks are as well.
SWB 40:13 I love that message of getting that community; it is so easy to feel alone. I mean, that's one of the functions of abuse is to isolate you, right? So it's a very isolating experience. I'm glad that you were able to find that for yourself. I know that therapy can be hard for some folks to find, good therapists, therapists that understand their background, particularly therapists who aren't white. Like, it's not always easy. It also sounds like it's been really transformative for you to invest that time in that healing.
AW 40:38 Yeah.
SWB 40:38 If somebody's listening in from an organization, and they're horrified to hear about stories like this, where can they start when it comes to understanding what abuse looks like in the workplace and how they can be better allies and more responsive to it?
AW 40:54 That's a good question. I honestly, if somebody does not know about this type of abuse in their workplace, which happens in every single workplace, I really would start with looking at how privileged you are to not ever have had that chance. Like, I would actually start to take maybe some anti-racist classes or some work in that kind of space because if you have no awareness of this happening. You've definitely been in a bubble and very privileged to not have had to experience that.
SWB 41:23 Yeah. Like, you got to look at where you've been insulated.
AW 41:25 Insulated.
SWB 41:25 And why you've been so insulated. Yeah, yeah.
AW 41:28 I mean, I guess maybe even starting with talking to people in your workplace that are a different race, a different gender, different abilities to start to talk to folks about their experience, and just have listening sessions. So this wouldn't be about you, this would be about really understanding somebody else's experience.
SWB 41:47 So last question: for people listening in who are ready to kind of start doing some of that healing, and are kind of wanting to move on from these sort of toxic environments, is there a practice that you've found really helpful in kind of re-centering yourself and processing some of those feelings, so you can move on?
AW 42:06 The practice that I've really found helpful is to really feel my feelings. And what that means is to feel, again, the sensations in my body. So what I do is, I do a body scan, starting from the top of my head, moving all the way down, and just acknowledging and putting my attention, and spending time feeling every sensation that I feel in every single part of my body. So maybe it's like tightness in my forehead, clenching in my jaw, a heaviness in my chest, a knot in my stomach, tenseness in my legs. And I don't make up any stories about it. And I don't try to analyze it, all I do is feel it because that's actually what it means to feel your feelings. What biologically happens when we do not do that is chemically, our feelings get stuck in our body. And that causes our brain to start to kind of loop and get into rumination. So that's what happens when we don't feel our feelings. And so the number one thing that's really helped me is to every single day, as much as possible, do that scan, feel my feelings to completion, let them go, let them move through my body. And that will calm my nervous system, so I can have the resources to heal and work through all the other things that are there.
SWB 43:30 I love that. Thank you so much. The body scan is such a great tool. And "A Culture of Safety" is such a great book. I hope everybody picks it up. Thank you again for being on the show today.
AW 43:40 Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.
SWB 43:46 Okay, so Alla left us with this recommendation to do a body scan. So let's talk about that a bit. Because I will be honest with you, the first time I did one, it was on a Zoom call, the first session of a group I'd joined, and I was uncomfortable. It felt like I don't know, why are we spending time on this? And then I let go of my judgments. Or at least I tried to, and I did the damn thing. And you know what it helped? Yeah, it helped. Because that process that Alla describes, which is starting at the top of your head, and then moving all the way down your body, just putting attention to each part of you and checking in with it, it lets you become more conscious of the things you're holding onto, the tension and the feelings. Conscious of stuff that you didn't even realize was there. It might be a fist that's been clenched for God knows how long, or a brow that's furrowed really tight, or some heaviness in your heart, and whatever it is, once you're aware of it, you can give yourself some time to feel what you need to feel and actually release some of that feeling. Like, let it go and move on from it. After a minute or so you might be surprised just how much better, how much freer or more spacious you feel.
44:49 So that is my You've Got This for today. It's a bit different. It's to hang out right now and do a one-minute body scan. All right. So let's start. Take a deep breath. Feel that breath fill your lungs all the way up. And now exhale, releasing that breath back into the world. Keep on breathing, slow and steady, and draw your attention to the top of your head. Start working your way down slowly pausing and noticing each part of your body. What's your forehead doing? Your eyebrows. Maybe you notice tightness, or pressure, or pain, buzzing behind the ears, a clench in the jaw. As you notice any of those different sensations, take a moment and acknowledge them. And then allow yourself to release whatever it is that you're holding onto there. Specifically, take a moment and notice and then let it go, unclench and unfurrow.
45:53 And then release your attention on that body part and keep working downward, through your neck and your shoulders. Are they hunched? Down into your arms, and hands, and then the tips of your fingers. What do you notice as you go? Now go on to your heart, and your gut. What's there? What weight do you notice? What are you carrying? Keep on breathing as you work downward and explore each of those sensations. What's happening in your legs? All the way down to your feet and your toes. And as you go, stay curious. What's present here? What am I carrying here? And as you reach the soles of your feet, take another deep breath. Exhale, and finish letting whatever you're feeling move through your body. Now check in with yourself. What feels different? What feels lighter? Where are you now? That's it. That's the body scan. I'll post up some links for body scans at https://www.activevoicehq.com/podcast. There are a ton of great ones out there, including some really long ones, which I'll be honest, I haven't worked my way up to yet. But they really do help you feel calmer. I hope they help you when you need it. You've got this.
47:27 And that is it for this week's episode of Strong Feelings. I'm your host, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, and Strong Feelings is a production of Active Voice. Check us out at https://www.activevoicehq.com/ and get all the past episodes, show notes, and full transcripts for every episode at https://strongfeelings.co/. This episode was recorded in South Philadelphia and produced by Emily Duncan. Our theme music is "Deprogrammed" by Philly's own Blowdryer. You can check them out at https://blowdryer.bandcamp.com/. Huge thanks to Alla Weinberg for being our guest today. And thank you so much for listening. If you liked our show today, please don't forget to subscribe and rate us wherever you listen to your favorite shows. See you next time.