[ANNOUNCER]:              

Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness, not just the obvious symptom. Our hosts, James and Coby.

[COBY]:             

Did we lose a patient?

[JAMES]:          

No, that’s just my lunch.

[COBY]:             

Hey, thanks for joining us. I’m Coby. He’s James. And we’re going to do something a bit different today. We’re going to answer some questions posed to us by you, our faithful listeners.

[JAMES]:          

What’s really exciting for me is to actually have people reaching out to us over LinkedIn, responding to whether we’ve reached out to them or listening to the podcast and saying, I really like this episode. And really what’s been kind of cool is the conversations that we’ve been able to have with people as a result of it. Anyways, it’s just nice to know that the ranting that we do on a regular basis is connecting with people. So Yeah, thanks for that.

[COBY]:             

Yeah, absolutely. So we have three questions we’re going to try and cover today, because that seems to be all we can get through in a podcast. And these are actually some pretty cool questions, and they came from some pretty interesting conversations. Like, all of them were really kind of coming from, again, usually chats over LinkedIn. And so it’s pretty neat to kind of be able to kind of have these questions. But I’m actually pretty excited for this conversation and to address these three questions. So, do you want to jump in?

[JAMES]:          

Let’s jump in.

[COBY]:             

Cool. All right, so I’ll ask you the first one. So how do we know when something is AI, or just marketed as AI?

[JAMES]:          

Yeah, so I want to start by actually answering the question for once, really, when we’re talking about, is something AI? In order for it to be artificial intelligence, it needs to synthesize, it needs to create something new from a prompt, using whatever database it is pulling from. It’s not just picking preexisting information and feeding it to you. It is generating something new from the input that it’s been asked for, whether that’s a prompt or whatever the system requires. Otherwise, it’s really just a sophisticated automation, which there’s nothing wrong with sophisticated automations. They are incredibly useful in creating efficiencies in our business. But what we are seeing and what we talked about in our last podcast episode on AI was kind of this distinction of most of the time, when people are talking about AI, they’re not really talking about artificial intelligence. They’re using the marketing term because it’s such a hot topic right now. And so if you are really looking to dig into what is the difference between the marketing language of AI, and actual artificial intelligence. In my mind, it comes down to the difference between a sophisticated automation, which is just a well constructed database that will pull out predetermined information based on the search terms or filters that it has been asked about, versus a rudimentary intelligence, which is generating something unique based on the information that it has been asked.

[COBY]:             

Yeah. And I mean, what was kind of cool was we actually had a number of conversations    after our recent podcast on AI, and one of the things that we kind of talked about with a few different people was we made the point that we didn’t think the AI quantified as being actual intelligence. But after some pretty interesting discourse, we actually had our minds changed. And we do think that there is intelligence in AI, especially because what you were saying before, when AI is the ability to synthesize new information or create new content based on the analysis of its prior learning, that is intelligence and really needs to be respected as such. But I think where we still kind of hold steadfast that not everything is artificial intelligence, that often sophisticated automation gets marketed as intelligence. Yeah. The thing is, what’s funny about sophisticated automation is that sometimes it actually looks more futuristic, what we thought AI was going to be. So it’s easier to make the confusion. Like a good example of sophisticated automation is like Alexa or Siri. Right. They are voice interfaced search devices that comb a database to identify pre established filters and give you the answer based on their filter algorithm. And that is a very cool kind of conversational form of automation, but it’s not generating new information or creating content based on prior learning. So even though it feels more “AI-y”, it’s just automation.

[JAMES]:          

Yeah. And it was really, I have been fairly dismissive of the term AI in the past, and it was the conversation, or the part of the conversation that really changed my mind was in that distinction between the two that, okay, there are actually products, there are actually technologies out there that will generate something new. And it may not be AI, like artificial intelligence on par with human intelligence, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a form of rudimentary intelligence.

[COBY]:             

Right.

[JAMES]:          

It needs to start somewhere, and we are actually seeing artificial rudimentary intelligence.

[COBY]:             

Yeah. So going back to the question, how do you know when a product or a service or a piece of software or whatever it is has actual AI and isn’t just marketing, it’s not marketed as AI when it’s just sophisticated automation? Really goes back to what we talked about in that episode about kind of the three things that AI can do well is to analyze and predict, analyze and create and analyze and recommend. And if that’s what the software is doing for you, it’s analyzing the existing information using prior learning and creating a new prediction, or it’s creating a new piece of content, or it’s creating a unique recommendation based on its analysis of its prior learning. That is AI. But honestly, we don’t see that as much as we see really sophisticated automation.

[JAMES]:

Yeah. One of the questions that we got over LinkedIn was around, how do you evaluate AI products? Which I think everything that we’ve talked about so far absolutely plays into it, because oftentimes I haven’t really seen AI in most of the HR products and programs that I’ve been evaluating. I’ve seen very sophisticated automation like recruitment comes to mind because we’ve looked into some of these different products, and taking a large amount of information into a database and then having it prioritize that information based on the parameters that you have set is incredibly good, useful, time saving activity. But it’s not artificial intelligence, it’s just a really slick form of automation.

[COBY]:             

Yeah. Because what a lot of the recruitment pieces do is you take the data and then it provides just a very fancy keyword search filter. Like look for these words and then put to the top of the list the ones with the most words in them. It’s not actually scanning for meaning and then making a unique recommendation based on the unique meaning that it’s getting from the resumes. So therefore, it’s not AI. It’s just a very sophisticated automation, which again, has its place. It’s just, when it’s marketed as AI powered, it’s not.

[JAMES]:          

No.

[COBY]:             

Right.

[JAMES]:          

Yeah. And I want to thank those people who have reached out to us and engaged in a conversation, because obviously we have very strong opinions. That’s probably not a shock at this point. And it’s really nice to engage with people who also have really strong opinions. And the conversations have been extremely respectful and sometimes we don’t agree and other times we do a follow up podcast question where we’re going. Yeah, you know what, we actually have changed some of our opinions.

[COBY]:             

Yeah. So again, please keep that discourse coming.

[JAMES]:          

All right, so our second question, which I love, how do you handle a toxic employee?

[COBY]:             

Yeah, that is a big question.

[JAMES]:          

Short question with a whole lot to unpack here.

[COBY]:             

I suppose I would say buckle up, because I think we’re going to end up going on a journey with this one. So I think we’ve got a few things that we need to kind of get into when it comes to a toxic employee. And I think one thing that I want to start off with is kind of what makes a toxic employee, because for a large part, there’s usually a spark of something that kind of sets an average person off on a toxic path. It’s almost like a small wound, I guess you could kind of say, right, and that wound can really turn into a major problem if the conditions to have it fester and get worse really happens. And a lot of the time in our workplaces, whether the spark was created at work or created in the personal life is kind of irrelevant for the most part, but it’s really about the conditions that the person is spending their day in at work that tends to almost indicate how infected that wound is going to be or how ignited that spark of toxicity is going to be. And it’s really important to understand that the environment, the culture, the people work in, tends to be the catalyst for what makes a small wound or a small spark of disengagement turn into something that is severely toxic. So when we’re in a workplace that has punitive company policies or ineffective leadership or unsafe working conditions or incompetent wages,    et cetera, that where that spark comes from will kind of be less important than the fact that the environment that the person is in, day in, day out at work is essentially, if they have these punitive policies in effective leadership and so on, you’re kind of pouring lighter fluid on that spark, and it’s going to end up exploding into a huge problem down the road. And so it’s really important for us to realize that the toxic employee isn’t necessarily caused by the workplace fully, but the workplace plays a big part in the growth of the toxicity.

[JAMES]:          

Yeah, I think it’s worth reiterating that the catalyst for it, or the wound, as you’ve said, may have nothing to do with the workplace. It could be a personal problem or a situation that has come up in the personal life that has caused this wound that the person is dealing with. But the behaviors play out in the workplace, and it becomes a workplace problem regardless. But it’s also, I think it’s important for us to distinguish between toxic behaviors and somebody who’s full blown toxic. We talk a lot about job dissatisfaction, about disengagement, and about the factors of your workplace and how they can, if they’re not competitive, sufficient, and equitable, how they can create job dissatisfaction as job dissatisfaction. Maybe job dissatisfaction is that wound that you’re talking about, and if left to become, to try to heal on its own without you doing anything about the conditions. It could just continue to get worse. And sometimes people start displaying toxic behaviors that needs to be addressed through your performance or management system or through your progressive disciplinary policies. Because what we’re talking about in terms of toxic behaviors is where the dissatisfaction just affects the individual and the individual’s performance and the individual’s day. It’s now starting to affect the team. It’s starting to affect everyone around them. It is becoming why this person is almost infecting others. That type of behavior needs to be addressed through your progressive disciplinary policies. And if it’s addressed and the conditions are worked on, you can bring people back from the brink. It requires time, energy, and effort like no word of a lie. You’re going to have to invest some time into that because these things generally don’t happen overnight, right? So if the situation didn’t spontaneously happen overnight, it’s probably not going to spontaneously go away overnight. Full blown toxicity, where somebody is just rampant, they’re undermining management or their supervisor, or they’re displaying behaviors that are unsafe or putting other people in jeopardy at risk and making them uncomfortable. And it’s beyond an individual circumstance or behavior, and it’s become a pattern of behaviors that’s full blown toxicity in our view. And unfortunately, the best advice that I can give you is that sometimes the infection needs to be removed. Sometimes the best recourse for the individual and for your company is to remove that person. Termination of employment is there for a reason. You are very unlikely to go through the energy of your progressive disciplinary policies. If somebody is just fully, really causing that problem full blown throughout your organization, they’re not going to come back and be a top performer.

[COBY]:             

I think you’re definitely right to kind of separate the fact that there are people who are at risk of becoming toxic and displaying toxic behaviors. It’s more like they themselves are showing, again, they’re showing the behaviors that are toxic, but with intervention, their behaviors could be remedied. It’s maybe not all the time. It’s in certain contexts or certain people or whatever like that, that there is a way out through, again, through progressive performance management and that type of thing. But then there are people who are just bullies and harassers, again, just totally undermining, creating unsafe conditions and the whole thing. And again, if we’re talking about a toxic employee, is like an infection. If you don’t catch it early enough, it can spread through your entire workplace, contaminating everything that comes in contact with. So you need to know when can you treat the infection because the person is only at risk or when do you need to amputate and get rid of the full blown toxic person. And it’s important to, I think, really be really clear about which the person is, because if you have progressive discipline, the person who is at risk is likely going to be going through the progressive discipline process. The full blown toxic person is probably speeding through that process. So getting rid of them with cause should not be that difficult of a situation. But it is really important to know that you will be better off by removing the full blown toxic employee.

[JAMES]:          

And again, it’s largely irrelevant what the catalyst was and where it came from, because the effect that it has on your workplace, on the rest of the team, and honestly on the company’s bottom line, is substantial. I can share a personal story. In my early twenties,    I had a supervisor who I only found out years later, was dealing with a lot of personal challenges. But in the workplace, this person was toxic. This person displayed behaviors that caused the entire team to walk on eggshells. We never knew what we were in for with this person, and it caused so much stress and anxiety for team of what? There were probably 16 of us all affected by this. The performance of 16 people was significantly negatively impacted by one person’s unresolved behaviors. And the wound happened outside the workplace, but the effects were still very prominent in the workplace. And I feel very empathetic for this person now knowing that some of the things that they were dealing with. But from a business standpoint, it’s largely irrelevant, because if they were not willing to change their behaviors, the impact that they were having on the organization was substantial and it was negative and it needed to be addressed. But unfortunately, it never was addressed. And it went on for years.

[COBY]:             

Yeah. And I mean, the reality is that we see this more often than anybody really should. All of us, everyone sees this, that the toxic person is almost like one of the last people that ends up, you end up getting rid of. And what’s funny is sometimes, and we hear this a lot in the work that we do, that often the toxic person is so incremental or so influential and so important to the organization’s success that we couldn’t possibly get rid of them. And we want to dispel that myth of an idea right now, that person, no matter how big of a rainmaker, high achiever, expert that you rely on, they are holding you back and handcuffing you. You could be so much better without them. Because the thing is that a full blown toxic employee is a huge financial drain on the company. Right. So just like how in a major infection can drive up your medical costs and place your long term health in danger, a full blown toxic employee can drive up your labor and customer costs and place your long term organizational success in danger. And that one person, that one high achieving person that you work with was at the cost of 16 others. Right. And, I mean, that’s just it is that there. We’ve heard this before, too, where there’s major rainmakers that are.

[JAMES]:          

We’ve seen it in sales positions.

[COBY]:             

Absolutely.

[JAMES]:          

For some reason. We’ve seen it, I think, somewhat more prevalently.

[COBY]:             

Well, yeah. And I think it has more to do with any kind of job where somebody brings in a lot of business, has kind of given carte blanche to be a terrible person, or there’s no consequences to somebody when they bring in enough money sort of thing. But the reality is that they’re only your top earner because everyone else’s growth has been stifled. They’re standing on the backs of other people. So, of course they’re highest up. If you remove that person, you have no idea the kind of the multiplier of talent that they’re standing on, that they’re holding back with their behavior. That could end up. That will end up surpassing what this one person is able to do. So there really is not the argument to be made for keeping them.

[JAMES]:          

And wasn’t it Harvard Business Review that was talking about the, to replace or the impact that one toxic employee has? It requires 200% of your top earners performance to just compensate for that one toxic employee.

[COBY]:             

Yeah. I think this is like a 2015 study they talked about in terms of your all stars or your superstars in your workplace. Yeah. That it takes two superstars working at full capacity to make up for one toxic employee.

[JAMES]:          

Yeah. Which is an amazing stat. If you think about the impact on your business. If you think about, maybe you’re talking in a sales department, how much business are your top two performers bringing in? That’s what it’s costing you to just deal with a single toxic employee. The impact that a toxic employee has on everybody around them is just monumental. We’ll make sure that there’s a link in a citation to that article in the study, in the show notes.

[COBY]:             

Yeah, actually, it’s pretty interesting study because it also talked about the fact that almost, like, the advantage of not having a toxic worker or taking someone that’s at risk of becoming toxic and bringing them almost like, and bringing them kind of back from the brink and allowing them to almost become like an average employee. That, again, bringing back an at risk toxic person to being an average worker enhances organizational performance to a much greater extent than replacing an average worker with a top 1% performer.

[JAMES]:          

That’s crazy.

[COBY]:             

Yeah, exactly. Almost like removing the infection and having someone just be an average employee is more impactful than turning an average employee into a superstar. And that is so telling about how damaging and infectious a toxic employee can be.

[JAMES]:          

Well, you’re right. And it really speaks to your analogy of toxic employee being an infection and infecting everyone around them. And when you remove that, you’re not just removing the loss of that one person, you’re removing the impact, the negative impact that one person has on everybody who they interact with through the day.

[COBY]:             

Exactly. Again, the question is, how do you handle a toxic employee? Well, identify whether they’re at risk of becoming full blown toxic by only really showing some behaviors and some toxic tendencies, and whether or not they can be remedied, or if they are a full blown infectious toxic person that needs to be amputated, and realizing that even though they may be a high performer or a rainmaker, they’re actually holding back others, and you’re actually paying a lot for them to stay there. You’re losing money on keeping them there, and you’ll be better off in so many different ways once that person is removed. And again, like I said, likely, if someone’s at risk, you’re showing progressive discipline to kind of help them remedy the situation. But if someone is full blown, they’re probably speeding through it, and it won’t take a lot to have them be let go with cause.

[JAMES]:          

Documentation is your friend, always is.

[COBY]:             

Absolutely.

[JAMES]:          

It’s not often that we recommend firing an employee.

[COBY]:             

I think this is, like, our one time that we pretty much, yeah, there’s.

[JAMES]:          

A few instances where we do, but it’s typically about not only the impact that individual has, but the impact that they have on everyone else.

[COBY]:             

Okay, so I think that was, like I said, I think that was a bit of a journey for us to go on. So let’s move on to our next question. So I’ll ask this one to you. How can I implement wellness accommodations for a team member without burning out everyone else on my team?

[JAMES]:          

What I like about this question is that it feels like a very specific, earnest, and honest question of, I want to do what’s right. I want to provide wellness supports for the individual or the individuals who need it. But I want to make sure that I’m not just dumping their work on other people. What I would do in this situation is, well, first of all, it’s important to acknowledge that as a manager, as a leader, you don’t necessarily need to have the answer to everything yourself. Right. The way that I would handle a situation like this is that if the company that I’m working for provides x number of mental health days that people can take at any time, as a manager, I’m going to want to make sure that my team is taking advantage of those days because I know that if they take the time that they need to refresh, they’re going to come back. They’re not going to be as burnt out and their performance is going to be better. So I’m going to want to encourage them to take that. But if I’m encouraging them to take the time, then I have to put a plan in place. So I would crowdsource a solution with my team. I would sit down with them and say, we have these supports. As a manager, I want you to be able to take advantage of these supports, but we also need to recognize that when somebody is out of the workplace, the work doesn’t necessarily disappear. So what are we going to do as a team to accommodate that? Because everybody needs to take advantage of these wellness supports that are available to us, right? That’s one situation. And I think if how you as a team come together and allow and accommodate those supports that are being provided, it will help to mitigate some of the stress and the anxiety and the frustration that people may feel that, oh, James is out of the office again and I need to pick up the slack because he’s being a lazy whatever, and now I’m dumped with more work. The other situation that can arise is that maybe somebody is experiencing a lot of personal stressors and they need to take an extended time away from the workplace. These things do happen, right? It’s likely going to be an unpaid leave. Unless they have a lot of vacation or whatever saved up and they’re taking their vacation time, then that’s an entirely different thing, right? Then you’re just accounting for vacation time and you should have some sort of plan in place anyways. But regardless, that’s a tangent. Again, you need to put some sort of plan in place of what are you going to do with extended leaves. The solution is going to be unique to your workplace. What I would probably advocate as the manager in this situation is if I know that, okay. One of my team members came to me. They’ve got a doctor’s note and they want to take a two week unpaid leave of absence to recover for their own mental health. Well, if the organization is able to accommodate that, great. But how do I protect the rest of my team? We know that the work is still going to be there. Two weeks is not enough time that I’m probably going to be able to find somebody temporary to come in and cover that work. So what I would probably advocate for with the organization is the work needs to be distributed amongst the rest of the team. The company is saving the money that the person is taking an unpaid leave. I would look at, can we compensate the rest of the team who are picking up the added responsibilities? Right. If your team members are taking on these added responsibilities and picking up the slack of somebody who is out and not being compensated for that, you are running the risk of burning out the rest of your team. If they are being compensated for it. They may still be very tired and stressed out about the whole situation. But at least you are doing something to help to mitigate some of the stressors and some of the frustrations. And it’s as much the stressors and frustrations that lead to burnout as it is the actual amount of work. It’s the feeling of, well, I have to do all of this additional work and nobody cares that I’m taking on all these extra responsibilities that can lead to people being frustrated and burnt out. Apparently I’m long winded on this one. I wasn’t to rant this much, but if I were the manager in that situation, that’s how I would approach this, is if it’s something that you know is likely to happen because your company offers these supports, work it out, crowdsource it with your team and come to an accommodation, because I’m going to want my team to take advantage of those. If it’s a different scenario where somebody’s going to be out for an extended period of time, look at how can you, if the work still needs to be done, how can you compensate the rest of your team? Whether it’s monetary or in some other fashion, how can you show that you respect and you appreciate and the company understands the added burden that they are carrying?

[COBY]:

Yeah, I think that you’re bang on at the beginning. We say you need to have a plan, because the thing is that whether or not your company provides wellness days or whatever, I mean, they should. But whether or not you should always have a plan for being short staffed, because I’ve never worked with a single business in any industry that’s never had a problem of running short staffed. That’s just the reality of it. So one, you should be planning ahead in general, but the thing is that. But I want to preface that with you need to plan ahead, but if you want to actually be successful with this, then you really need to be making sure that you’ve created a culture of psychological safety so you can ask your teammates for their input, that you can allow people to actually advocate for. I need the break or I need the rest, or be able to share that they’re sick or whatever it is. Right. Because you want to make sure that the person who needs the wellness time or the wellness accommodation or the reduced workload or whatever it is, that they can ask for it, but also make sure that the rest of the team can advocate for what they need so they don’t get burned out. Because otherwise you’re just going to create the burnout multiplier effect where you burn out one person, dump all the work on someone else, then that person gets burned out, then you dump all that work on someone else, and then so on, and you end up burning out your entire department. So one, you want to make sure that people are willing to share their input and ideas about how can we as a team deal with this? Because wellness is not just a problem for you, the manager, and for the person who’s been burned out, wellness is a team issue. And going back to what we talked about kind of in the toxic employee piece, talking about 7X3 Rule        and job dissatisfaction, if your wellness plan, for your wellness plan to be sufficient, your wellness supports to be sufficient, you need to actually have a plan for the workloads, right? Because if your plan is, well, we’ll just put everything on their desk, and when they come back from their week of wellness time, they’ll just have to catch up. No, that’s not sufficient. Or if your wellness plan is, we’ll just dump all the work onto the person next to them, then till they burn out, that’s not sufficient either. So you really need to be strategic and planning ahead, because these are not things that are never going to happen. These are things that are definitely going to happen. And if you’re not ready for them, then that’s just failure to plan. But if you want to actually leverage the team, leverage their thoughts, their input again, so you as a manager don’t have to come up with all of the answers all of the time, then you need to make sure that you’ve created enough psychological safety that exists within the culture of your team to allow for that open discourse. Because, yeah, it sucks. When someone’s out. It sucks. We have to work harder. But how can we mitigate that? What are all the options in front of us? Sometimes it might need to be that you need to look at a temporary staff, but sometimes it’s a matter of shifting around responsibility. Sometimes it’s a matter of working and extending timelines. There are different things that you can do, but if you have a system or a process to react appropriately and not just be reactive and go short staffed and burn everybody else out, then you’ll be able to handle it so much better. So the sad part of my response to this question is that you need to have a good plan, have a good culture, and be very strategic in your effort. Doesn’t really help the person that doesn’t have those things right now. But if you want to actually keep this from being a constant problem, those things need to be in place.

[JAMES]:          

No, I think that’s very well said, though. You’re right. I guess my response was assuming a level of psychological safety being present in the workplace. But I think the point that I really liked in your comment was how we think about sufficiency. Because we talk a lot about competitive, sufficient, and equitable, and how important it is for those three things to be in place. And oftentimes when we’re talking about sufficiency, we’re talking about is it sufficient to accomplish what it’s intended to accomplish. And so we sometimes only think of that from the one dimension of what sufficiency in what we offer. But I thought that you made a really good point about it’s not just in the sufficiency of what we offer, but in the sufficiency of how we handle it. The sufficiency of how we protect those who are still in the workplace anyways. I like that language. I’m going to steal that language.

[COBY]:             

Absolutely. But I do think, though, that one of the challenges that comes from wellness tends to be a bit of a hot button topic, because people will feel like, well, what I need to maintain my wellness and what you need to maintain your wellness are different. Therefore you’re getting something I’m not. That’s unfair. And there’s favoritism and blah, blah, blah. That does happen. What often causes that is job dissatisfaction and poor psychological safety. Because if people feel, because again, if people feel that the factors of their workplace, their wellness, their wages, their safety, their consistency is being competitive, sufficient, and equitable, and they feel that they’re safe to speak up and request things without retaliation or ridicule, they’re less likely to have that attitude. Right. And one of the things we talk about when we talk about psychological safety is which we talk about the importance of asking for accommodations or asking for or advocating for your own mental health. And which is why I say it’s so important to look at psychological safety as an essential part of your wellness plan. Because the thing is that when you need something that allows you to do your job better today and for the long term, that should always be heard and always be respected because you’re trying to say, hey, you’re already paying me. What if you gave me something a little bit more that would allow me to give you even better work than I’m already giving you? That should be a welcome conversation, right?

[JAMES]:          

It’s not always feasible to provide it, but it should always be welcomed to explore it.

[COBY]:             

Yes, absolutely. And we’ve had this conversation with different people before where sometimes it’s small things. Again, this kind of moves away from the wellness part of it. But some people are naturally gifted typists and can work really fast on computer. Others are two finger typers and they really take a long time to produce results. But providing things like, for example, speech to text software on people’s computers is something where that’s an accommodation. I’d have to give requests for, maybe get a doctor’s note for them, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we hear that and we’re like, are you kidding? That is a productivity tool that will allow you to give your best possible work. So if you have a psychological safety to ask for that accommodation, that type of, hey, here’s how to get even more out of me, that should be ideally heard and respected, and then that should be offered to everybody because it should be about the best work, even if it looks a bit different for different people, because we all need different things to maintain wellness and maintain productivity.

[JAMES]:          

And not everybody’s going to need speech tech software. But for those who do need it or who want it, if it is actually helping their performance or even helping them to work in a different way, another simple accommodation is or not simple. Sometimes they can be expensive, but like standing desks, I really like having the, I’ve got a little platform that rests on top of my desk that I can raise or that I can lower. For me, it makes a big difference because just the change in position, not everybody wants that. Not everybody likes to stand and work, not everybody likes to sit all the time and work, not everybody has to either. But whether it’s a physical accommodation, whether it’s a technological accommodation, whether it is accommodating a wellness support or leave. None of these things are going to be possible for people to ask for if they don’t have psychological safety. And ultimately, it may not be feasible for your company to provide everything that people ask for. It’s not going to be feasible to provide everything that people ask for. But being open to that conversation, respecting that, different people are going to need different things to get the best work. And if your goal is to get the best out of people, investigate whether or not it is an accommodation that you can provide.

[COBY]:

Yeah, I really do think, though, that one of the biggest barriers to people providing accommodations, even small accommodations, are the fear of, well, if I have to do that for you, I’ll have to do it for everybody else, and then where will it ever stop? And I’m like, well, here’s the thing. If you’re in a work environment where people feel dissatisfied and they don’t feel psychologically safe, they will look at inequity. Yes, they’ll look at inequality. Sorry. They’ll look at it and be like, well, they have something different from me. And because I’m not satisfied my job and I can’t speak my mind, they can’t have that. And that will absolutely happen. We’ve seen it time and time again. But if you make the effort to follow the 7X3      Rule and providing competitive, sufficient and equitable factors of your workplace, and you look to provide psychological safety, that problem goes away.

[JAMES]:          

Well, and it’s why the workplace culture hierarchy is a framework for your workplace culture, because you do need to establish a firm foundation where people are not dissatisfied in their job. Because if they are dissatisfied, like you just said, Coby, if they’re dissatisfied, they’re going to look at any difference as an inequality. If people are largely satisfied in their role and you are providing things that are competitive, sufficient, and equitable, and then you move up the hierarchy and you’re providing for psychological just. There will be fewer of those interpersonal conflicts or the finger pointing or the, why does Coby get something that I don’t?

[COBY]:             

Yeah, because eventually people will be like, we’ll come say, I’m given what I need to be successful, even if it looks a bit different from somebody else. That’s okay. You will get there. That is a very normal thing in some businesses. To you listening, you might be like, that doesn’t happen. But no, that legitimately does happen.

[JAMES]:          

It is a journey that you can take.

[COBY]:             

Exactly. You will get there. But if you are riddled with job dissatisfaction and low psychological safety, then that concept could just be so abstract and so foreign to you that you couldn’t even fathom what that looks like. But we’ve seen the transformations. We know it does happen. And the idea of then it’s about what do I need to give you my best work? And that’s why you see stats around higher productivity with inclusive workplaces and increased profitability with engaging workplaces, because people have moved away from fighting for everything has to be exactly the same, or there’s favoritism or this or that to what’s best, to the point that I’m taking care of now, what can I bring to my team? How can my team bring to the company? And that is the evolution of it. So there really is major benefits to this. And I think that actually going back to the whole idea around wellness accommodations, how that’s currently handled, the infrastructure you have in place, the culture that you are trying to implement, these wellness accommodations are a good litmus test for what is the reality of the culture that you’re working in and how good is your planning to avoid some of the things that will, again, lower the sufficiency of things of your factors of the workplace, like wellness?

[JAMES]:          

Yeah, no, I agree.

[COBY]:             

All right, well, that was our three questions. I think I’ll just do a bit of a recap. Okay. So our first question was, how do we know when something is AI or just marketed as AI? Well, probably the most important thing to know is the difference between AI, which is the synthesis of new information or content based on the analysis of prior learning, and sophisticated automation, which is using a well constructed database to access information using keyword search filters. Now, again, sometimes the well constructed database and the interface of sophisticated automation can feel more like AI than actual AI. But again, understanding that, again, both of them are effective, useful, great productivity tools. But if you’re looking for AI, you need to realize that most of AI is analyzing and predicting, analyzing and creating and analyzing and recommending. If those three things are. If three of those things are not happening, then most likely you’re dealing with sophisticated automation. Sorry. Our next question was, how do you handle toxic employee? Well, it’s important to realize that toxic employees initial behaviors, or the initial wound that causes them, can really be allowed to fester and grow in a workplace that deals with a lot of dissatisfaction, things like punitive company policies, ineffective leadership, unsafe working conditions, uncompetitive wages, burnout, and so on. So realizing that sometimes the catalyst for toxic behaviors may not come from the workplace, but the workplace definitely allows if they deal with those kind of dissatisfaction factors really can allow for some major toxic growth. So it’s important to realize that we have to look at different types or the different kind of categories of people when it comes to are they toxic? First is are they at risk of actually being toxic where they’re showing some toxic behaviors, but with intervention, their behaviors could be treated? Or are they full blown toxic where the toxicity is so extensive that the only real recourse is to have them removed from the team? Because a toxic employee is like an infection. If it’s not caught early, it can spread throughout your workplace and contaminate everything that comes in contact with. So you need to know when you can treat the infection and when you need to amputate. And realizing that even a high achieving toxic employee is still holding back your business, despite the optics, because it takes two high achieving, top 1% performers to make up for the productivity loss and the impact of a single toxic employee. Now, our third question was, how can I implement wellness accommodations for a team member without burning out everyone else on my team? The most efficient answer to give is that you really need to plan for absences or accommodations or reduced workloads well before you need to, because you want to be able to realize that this is a reality of our workplaces. So we should be trying to work through these kind of solutions with our team, not just being owned by us as managers. So we should be able to kind of find out what are going to be the protocols in place that your team can expect when this inevitability happens. But that can’t happen unless you’ve created a psychological safety in your workplace. Because the culture of being able to ask for what you need and be able to speak your mind and share when you feel like you’re being taken advantage of, that has to be part of this more democratic way of leading your team by trying to work through this whole process of dealing with work shortages or temporary stuff or whatever it is as a team problem, not as an individual problem, because it’s important to realize that you don’t have to have all the answers as a manager, that if you create psychological safety in your team, they can be part of the solution. All right, so that about does it for us. For a full archive of our podcast and access the video version hosted on our YouTube channel all visit www.roman3.ca/podcast, thanks for joining us.

[ANNOUNCER]:              

For more information on topics like these, don’t forget to visit us at www.roman3.ca/      Side effects of this podcast may include improved retention, high productivity, increased market share, employees breaking out in spontaneous dance. Dry mouth. A version of the sound of James’s voice. Desire to find a better podcast…