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Welcome to Conflict Managed. I'm your host, Mary Brown. Conflict Managed is a weekly podcast about toxic work environments and how to [music] fix them. We're glad you're here.

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Good morning, Kathy, and welcome to Conflict Managed.

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Thank you, Mary. It's really great to be here and I'm so excited that you hold up this topic in the world at this time. So, thank you for your work.

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Oh, well, thank you so much. What a wonderful way to begin. And I am so excited to talk about your brand new book. And I know we're going to get to

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it, but it sounds so helpful when we think about how to treat people at work and to think about what problems are

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before we try to start fixing them. But before we get to that, I would like to hear about the first job you ever had as a young person.

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46 seconds

My my early work history is a little um mired. I ended up being a caretaker in my home for um my mother from 13 to 18.

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So it created a um preoccupation with doing the caretaking and going to

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school. And so she um happened to pass away when I was 18. So then I um I was

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1 minute, 13 seconds

left to navigate all of the world. I was an only child and um and so it took a

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1 minute, 20 seconds

while till I ended up with a first job, first job and my first job ended up after that experience being a meter reader. And um I was from Dayton, Ohio.

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And back in that time, meter readers were actually individuals that jumped fences from yards to yards and went in

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1 minute, 40 seconds

people's house to get an accurate reading. And it was a great opportunity to stay fit [laughter] and to um also

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1 minute, 50 seconds

engage with people who sometimes sometimes the meter reader is all the person only person they see that month

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1 minute, 58 seconds

and they're you know some people would have lemonade and cookies when I arrived and and it was just a great um great

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2 minutes, 6 seconds

introduction into workforce at a different level.

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2 minutes, 11 seconds

what vastly different experiences. And yet there's already a bit of a thread going through from caring um for your

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2 minutes, 17 seconds

mother to um going into people's homes and being cognizant of the just the human relation of something

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2 minutes, 26 seconds

very pedestrian reading their meter but actually human connection. Yeah. So much so.

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2 minutes, 34 seconds

So where did you go after your meter reading days?

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2 minutes, 38 seconds

After that, I um ended up doing um I went to college for a little bit and um

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2 minutes, 46 seconds

went to be a social work major until I realized that um I have a tendency because of that thread to get far too

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2 minutes, 53 seconds

involved. Then I um I left college after a couple years. I got lost for a few years and then um ended up coming to um

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3 minutes, 4 seconds

I moved from Ohio to Washington State and recreated a life with um some individual my next door neighbor growing

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3 minutes, 12 seconds

up in Washington state. And then when I got here, I got a job as a um working in

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3 minutes, 20 seconds

a data backup organization that was a really small business and then decided I wanted to start an art gallery. So I

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3 minutes, 29 seconds

started an art gallery and once again had that thread of supporting individuals. Artists aren't the most

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3 minutes, 37 seconds

confident people in the world. like my my work is the best and sometimes they need someone to see them and to feel

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3 minutes, 45 seconds

like they mattered. I carried self-published poets and and I did that for a couple years until I ended up

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3 minutes, 52 seconds

going into academics and I stayed there for 16 years and uh raised a family and

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3 minutes, 59 seconds

worked in academics and then ended up um running a leadership organization.

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4 minutes, 7 seconds

Pretty interesting. um work history and with the artist. You're an artist yourself. You do fiber arts. Is that correct?

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I I do. And it took me it took me a long time to um in an effort to hold up those

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other artists. It was really a process to give myself permission to be able to um be an artist. So, and now I I own that permission.

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4 minutes, 33 seconds

Isn't that so interesting? Um I'm a writer as well as you are and

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4 minutes, 37 seconds

[clears throat]

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um I've written a lot of books. I've written seven young adult books, a book on um eating disorders and two workplace

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4 minutes, 46 seconds

books. And I think only recently do I feel comfortable holding I'm an author

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4 minutes, 53 seconds

and a lot of it was those young adult books because I recognized that reading like what people like. I wrote young adult paranormal romance, right?

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5 minutes, 3 seconds

It's a certain kind of thing and there is something about the artist like I had a writer friend she's my best friend and we wrote um she wrote

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5 minutes, 11 seconds

different kinds of books but I would always promote her um and any other sort of independent or any kind of artist but

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5 minutes, 18 seconds

when it came to my cell isn't that so interesting it is so interesting and and when I started writing my book I have several

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5 minutes, 27 seconds

friends that have written books and one one woman in particular um we were going to partner on in a book and she had run

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5 minutes, 34 seconds

the leadership organization before I did and I was sure that I needed her to lend me the credibility to be an author

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5 minutes, 42 seconds

and and so we started writing and she said Kathy this is yours this is your work your story and and even my first

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5 minutes, 51 seconds

draft probably draft 12 got published and and with that first draft I had hundreds of footnotes and then I

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5 minutes, 59 seconds

realized I have all the work experience and stories to replace other people's footnotes that I felt that I needed for

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6 minutes, 7 seconds

credibility. And the truth is my experience is the credibility. And then I started going to um I'm part of some

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6 minutes, 15 seconds

groups and it was an international group that I'm in where we are a lot of writers that work together and most of

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6 minutes, 22 seconds

them are um out of the country and and then they saw me as an author and it

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6 minutes, 29 seconds

took it took that mirror for someone else to see Kathy your work's great this is and to be able to own and then start

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6 minutes, 38 seconds

to I'm going to go to a conference and be an author and I was good at being a leader. I was good at being a mother. I

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6 minutes, 47 seconds

was good at being all the friend role, all the roles in my life. But but to start to you kind of have to as if it

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6 minutes, 55 seconds

for a while until it um resonates within yourself to own that.

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7 minutes, 1 second

I just 100% hear that. So why do you think you can do all these other sorts of things and have no problem taking on

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7 minutes, 8 seconds

those roles? What is it about either artist or author that you met you think that you met your own resistance that

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7 minutes, 16 seconds

you needed that as if I think it's deeply personal and it goes back I can trace everything um back to

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7 minutes, 24 seconds

that caretaking role early on where I like to say I had an unhealthy relationship with responsibility

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7 minutes, 32 seconds

and and it felt a bit unresponsible to focus on self And especially as

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7 minutes, 40 seconds

women, we're taught to maybe not focus so much on ourselves and what we're doing. How do I support others? How do I

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7 minutes, 47 seconds

hold them up? And and it was just a process of being able to be comfortable and and be able to see myself as others

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see me and and have them reflect back like my my work being of value.

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And even today, you'll notice behind me, I have this huge loom behind me that's a community loom. And it just got back

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8 minutes, 12 seconds

from a uh local um festival where um kids, adults, everybody um hundreds of

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8 minutes, 20 seconds

people in two days came in and created this. And and I've gone to high schools.

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8 minutes, 26 seconds

I take this loom around. I I have a different loom that goes to businesses when I do the work there where I will pull out the frame and leave it with the

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workplace to help people remember that we're more together than we are alone.

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And it's it's so it's just a different expression for kinesthetic learners to be able to see, oh, that's me right

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8 minutes, 49 seconds

there. Do you see? And and there's a pride in that. And then when they can see that one thread, it's okay, but it's

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just a piece of fabric. But when you put them all together, we're so much more together.

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I love that. And if dear listener, you were just listening to this, this loom behind Kathy is beautiful. It's colorful

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9 minutes, 11 seconds

and it's got uh dimension to it and shape to it. And as you were saying that, that's what I was thinking so much that right now what stands out behind me, the colors is this beautiful yellow.

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9 minutes, 22 seconds

And the yellow is beautiful on its own.

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9 minutes, 25 seconds

But when it's paired with this little pink right behind it and these different colors of blue and it just brings it

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9 minutes, 33 seconds

brings it to life in a very different way. It does. It does.

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9 minutes, 37 seconds

So let's just go ahead and talk about your book and about leadership. tell us about your book and why you decided to

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write it and yeah let's just start there I would say my book is called reweaving what matters practical tools for workplace

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9 minutes, 53 seconds

transformation and the reweaving is where I started with the whole book and moved forward

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with that my husband taught me how to weave and and then when in my education

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I have um I do human systems dynamic I do a lot of systems transformation. My lens is systems in how to do

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10 minutes, 15 seconds

organizational development and work within um workplaces, government, and and help people come together. And when

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10 minutes, 24 seconds

I saw a floor loom, if you've ever seen a floor loom, [clears throat] all the threads, it's messy, it's

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10 minutes, 32 seconds

complicated, it's and I saw a system and I couldn't unsee it. And so then I be I

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10 minutes, 40 seconds

I started weaving and then once I'm writing into the reweaving part, I realized that most the work in our

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10 minutes, 47 seconds

organizations, we come to a place where we have a challenge. Um and we think that we need to create new jobs. We need

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10 minutes, 56 seconds

to create a new plan. We need to create and and often we create complex um solutions for complex problems that

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11 minutes, 6 seconds

often aren't sustainable. They're hard to implement. They take a lot of attention or that strategic plan sits

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11 minutes, 14 seconds

over there on the shelf and it's not a working living document where people end up using that. So, as I made a mistake

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11 minutes, 21 seconds

on um a scarf I was making for my son, I had to go backwards and and fix it and I

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11 minutes, 29 seconds

went back back back and um and I thought it's it's about unweaving. It is that is the part that is missing from how we're

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11 minutes, 38 seconds

doing that. So then it became compelling for me to I created a dual framework of

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11 minutes, 44 seconds

unweaving and reweaving and and in the business world in our personal lives and in our community if we don't understand

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11 minutes, 52 seconds

where we are at in this moment and and the warp threads are what hold the loom up. They are they are the foundation and

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every company has warp threads. They are your policies, procedures. They are how how we treat one another, what

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12 minutes, 9 seconds

communication looks like. And they're not impossible to change. But often times, our workplaces weren't created for the world that we live in right now.

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12 minutes, 19 seconds

In most cases, we've inherited things from 30, 40, 50 years ago. And and we don't need to blow it up, but we need to

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12 minutes, 27 seconds

understand um what did we inherit that doesn't fit the world right now. I've worked with organizations that have job descriptions

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12 minutes, 35 seconds

from those 30 years ago and they're not who we are now. So, so how do we shuffle? Who do we keep? How do we work

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with that? And and so I navigate the process for the unweaving is notice,

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12 minutes, 49 seconds

clarify, and act. And and people will b at notice. It's like, well, that's I need to do something. I need to. We live

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12 minutes, 58 seconds

in a world where we want it now and we want it quickly. And and the the act of noticing is who really has power? Who

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how are your communication channels working? Where are things getting stuck?

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13 minutes, 12 seconds

What what processes are you doing that that don't who who doesn't like going to

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that meeting on Tuesdays at 2 o'clock because nothing gets done? and and just re-examining what's working, what's not working, and where your foundation is.

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13 minutes, 31 seconds

And then you get to go into reweaving where it's like, let's envision now that we've cleaned up where

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13 minutes, 39 seconds

we are. Let's envision where we want to go. Let's let's do the structure to implement that and then let's do um the weaving to make sure it moves forward.

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So it's based on incremental actions because so many leaders have tried so many things. Trust is broken. Um people

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are exhausted. They don't the leader comes and says okay we're going to do another strategic plan and everybody's like no.

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And and and this helps to build trust through saying let's evaluate who we are, what's working, what's not working

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and how we move forward. and then they're able to take the time to rebuild

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that trust because it's been fractured because capacity is is at a limit for so

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many people and and so I've I I like to say if systems change was easy somebody

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14 minutes, 37 seconds

would have done it by now and and [clears throat] most of us haven't. So that's the basics of the book and and I

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14 minutes, 45 seconds

don't um I upfront say it's not a quick fix. It's a process that you do over and over and over again and it becomes a

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14 minutes, 53 seconds

practice to make your workplace reflect what is needed now in a world that looks like our world looks right now.

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Gosh, you just said so many wonderful things and I just want to think about the the unweaving. I think that's so

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human because we go in and we're like, "Right, well, let's something's not working, so let's just cut off the past

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and we're moving forward." I think so many people feel gaslit in their organizations. They feel unappreciated.

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15 minutes, 22 seconds

They feel just so out of sorts and frazzled because there's this lack of, well, you

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you wanted me to do this and now you don't care about that. You wanted me to do that. [clears throat] And I was thinking about uh not that I

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am a knitter, but um you know when you think about uh you know making a mistake and you go back through well now you've got these kinks right that you've pulled out, right?

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15 minutes, 47 seconds

But if I go back and look and plan um with anything if I can go back and look and see where the kink is or where like

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15 minutes, 55 seconds

I put the furniture together but I put this panel in backwards, you know, like I can then I don't have to take maybe everything apart but I can see what's

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not working and why. And also you can it's a way to really get people on board right to engage with them to get their

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perspective and if you ask people what is and isn't working um even whether or not you go with their

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ideas they have been a part of the process and so whatever is going to be forward um you have more partners

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16 minutes, 28 seconds

you do you do and and I I see so many people just tired of, oh, we're going to send you to this

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16 minutes, 36 seconds

conference, we're going to do this training, but then they come back to their desk and [clears throat] and they were given this opportunity to

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16 minutes, 44 seconds

bring new ideas to the table, but they come back and they have 683 emails, nine meetings that day, and [clears throat] a

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16 minutes, 52 seconds

full week, and nothing ever gets implemented because they haven't slowed down enough to be able to allow for a

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17 minutes

place to start to incorporate these new ideas. It It was It's interesting because the whole the book starts with

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17 minutes, 7 seconds

the story of Penelopey. So now the Odyssey has come out which is um I was a

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17 minutes, 14 seconds

divine timing on my part and and uh I I look and Penelopey was the first Unwaver

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17 minutes, 22 seconds

and and when I went back and was was researching this, she would weave the burial shroud for her father-in-law by

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17 minutes, 31 seconds

by day and then at night she would go in and she used unweaving as an act of agency and using her voice and an act of

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resistance. And and she found power in being able to unweave

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to be able to try to create the situation that she needed for either Odicius to return or Telmakius to come

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in and be old enough to be the kingdom king who was her son. So, it's interesting to see all of the sudden I

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used to search for the word unweaving and you would never find it anywhere and now now people are like well I know

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Penelope does [laughter] unweaving you know so and that is a really powerful um imagery to think about because a lot

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of times in business we're moving forward and we think the past is archaic um the past doesn't have anything for us

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we are the next the next the next but it's I think it's just a misunderstanding of what is the next and who who's doing it right so that we're

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taking people along the way with us right but that means that we're taking all the other initiatives and all the other things that we wo in right and

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many times we don't tell tell people what to stop we just assume they know or we pile on or we assume they know how to put things together

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um but that that real pause a real human pause to assess pass before the next great idea or the million of ideas.

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Sometimes we're just drowning in ideas and but one one thing that's executed excellently

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might be much better than 15 million little things and that one thing starts to oh we had success. people start to feel like, oh,

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this is we we accomplished something we and then say you change that Tuesday meeting to where you just have a 15minute huddle to say, okay, what do

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19 minutes, 28 seconds

people need this week? And and you change something simple like that, you have new people come in and then that little huddle is all they know. They

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don't know that dreadful Tuesday meeting that took forever and didn't accomplish anything. So then it gradually becomes the new way they they hear success and

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19 minutes, 46 seconds

um feel success. So then you go to the next incremental action and then pretty soon all of those incremental actions

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either give you data or they foster something that is creating that change to get where you want to go but people

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feel momentum and and oftentimes momentum isn't inherent with with a lot of this work.

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So how do you help leaders? Many times, you know, we think thought leadership, we've got strategic plan and you've got the leaders who are looking forward and

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20 minutes, 19 seconds

they're putting together the vision and then the people are executing it. And sometimes I see the disconnect of

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20 minutes, 26 seconds

a leader who personally really likes change, right? We did something and it's not that it wasn't broken, but shiny thing over here, shiny thing over there,

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let's try this, let's try that. And the people behind are just, you know, like trying to catch up. And it's not necessarily that they're resistant to change, but we do have different kinds

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20 minutes, 44 seconds

of personalities of some people who just really like the new and where a lot of the workforce is a

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20 minutes, 51 seconds

lot of people want to love predictability. This is what is required. This is what good and great looks like. I develop these skills. Uh

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20 minutes, 59 seconds

like like the weaver, the more you do it, you can become a master crafts person. So, how do you help leaders

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moderate their own desire for change when it's the the pace is um not really conducive to healthy work environments.

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And I I think a lot of that it's funny how many people came back with endorsements saying this is a book about mattering. And I'm like that's

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21 minutes, 24 seconds

fascinating. And and it is, but it's not titled, named, structured completely like that. And and when I go into a

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21 minutes, 33 seconds

workplace, I um I've often had I'll start at the bottom and and I want to talk to the people who have a different

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21 minutes, 41 seconds

vantage point. And I think when you realize like like in the using the metaphor of the weaving that every

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21 minutes, 48 seconds

thread if that one thread that wants change isn't very good just one thread lay one thread needs a hundred other

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21 minutes, 56 seconds

threads. And and so when you look at the workplace as being comprised of all the different values and perspectives and

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hearing different perspectives, you named that people get behind something when they're part of it and they have ownership in it. So for that person

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22 minutes, 13 seconds

that's eager to move things forward and wanting to see the change, um their task becomes how do you listen to how

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22 minutes, 21 seconds

everybody sees your workplace and what is possible to define what that best change can be when we get to that point.

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22 minutes, 31 seconds

And and it's gathering the stories, the perspectives. It's whether you're analyzing all the jobs, whether you're

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22 minutes, 38 seconds

and it's enough to keep the person that wants the information and the forward movement busy because they're looking at

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22 minutes, 48 seconds

all the things that are possible. So if they end up seeing, oh, we have four different paths we can move, but it's

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22 minutes, 55 seconds

critical. If you can't see that everyone comprises the worksheet or the workplace, then then you're not going to

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23 minutes, 4 seconds

create change that's going to be successful, sustainable, or meaningful.

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23 minutes, 10 seconds

And so, it's changing their lens to become more of a perspective gatherer or a possibility gatherer. And if they're

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23 minutes, 18 seconds

gathering those possibilities, that's that same energy of change. and they can

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23 minutes, 25 seconds

hold that and then figure out what the next path is.

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23 minutes, 30 seconds

So in a way giving them something to do, right? And so [laughter] just maybe um yeah, channeling that that

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23 minutes, 37 seconds

desire for the change and back down to gather other perspectives. So I like that very much. So when we think about workplaces and healthy workplaces, I'm

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23 minutes, 46 seconds

very interested in conflict. How have you dealt with conflict when you were um maybe a younger person at work?

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23 minutes, 54 seconds

Yeah.

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23 minutes, 55 seconds

And do you think about conflict at work differently now?

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23 minutes, 59 seconds

I I think I think I do. It used to scare me. Um and and it's um every family

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24 minutes, 6 seconds

dynamic even has people that avoid conflict and people that are ready to meet it headon. And I um it goes back to

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24 minutes, 16 seconds

um the mattering for me. I believe with conflict um resolution that often times the situations that take a long time to

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24 minutes, 25 seconds

become difficult. It it's been weeks, days, years and and and then someone wants and it's time to have a

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24 minutes, 33 seconds

conversation. And I think we owe the situation as much time, not as much time necessarily as it took to be difficult,

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24 minutes, 42 seconds

but um I have a process I go through that that's empathybased to to look at

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24 minutes, 50 seconds

all the people within the conflict. The the conversation deserves preparation time to to understand where where might

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25 minutes

that person be coming from. I like to say that if um it's really hard to dislike someone whose story you don't

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25 minutes, 6 seconds

know and and if if I am firing someone um I often go I there's so many tests

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25 minutes, 16 seconds

you can do to understand their strengths, understand what hat they are, understand what color they are, where are they, you know, and all the

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25 minutes, 23 seconds

different things. And and I had I had a woman that um she was on a performance plan. We we didn't see eye to eye. I

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25 minutes, 32 seconds

thought I loved her as an individual and and then I I was the performance plan wasn't working. And then I came to the

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25 minutes, 41 seconds

point where we we did a strengths test and her number one strength was input and and I thought I was empowering her.

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25 minutes, 50 seconds

Here's your task. Here's your project.

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25 minutes, 52 seconds

Here's what you do. Own it. Bring it back to me. Good luck. and and she needed I need examples of what this

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25 minutes, 59 seconds

looks like. I need copies of what you might want. I need to have and and so once I took the time to fully understand

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26 minutes, 7 seconds

her, I um before I gave her any project, we met for 45 minutes. I owned that the

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26 minutes, 15 seconds

role that I'd given her was too large and complex. and I empowered her to help me take one of those pieces to be able

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26 minutes, 23 seconds

to give it out to volunteers or something because her workload was a lot. But it took me understanding the person I was working with so I could

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26 minutes, 32 seconds

minimally be empathetic and understanding even if the end point

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26 minutes, 39 seconds

there's people I I gained that full understanding and you know I've I've never had a situation where it isn't

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26 minutes, 46 seconds

working where they don't know it's not working so they know it too and and so it's easing out of that with grace and

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26 minutes, 54 seconds

not making it anybody's fault. it just wasn't a fit. And I've kind of changed my workplace policies by also meeting

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27 minutes, 2 seconds

after um 60 days to say 30 days, sorry, after 30 days to say, is this what you

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27 minutes, 10 seconds

thought? Uh you know, is this working the way? and kind of being preemptive in in a workplace environment. And then

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27 minutes, 18 seconds

then you'll have difficult conversations that actually involve like dishonesty or practices that are are more difficult

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27 minutes, 25 seconds

than that. And I can still show up with empathy to try to understand what what drove you to um cook the books that way

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27 minutes, 35 seconds

and and and [clears throat] make um another organization look bad by the way you've organized overtime. you know, it's uh I I can show up with

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27 minutes, 44 seconds

empathy, but it doesn't mean that I can't um also let the person go or have a challenge there.

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27 minutes, 52 seconds

Yeah, I think that's just so important and we lose sight when somebody's causing us pain or making it difficult

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27 minutes, 59 seconds

that we have the difference between who they are as an individual and who they are as a particular employee doing a

28:06

28 minutes, 6 seconds

particular job at a particular time, right? And um and I do hear that that reflection. I like this personally,

28:16

28 minutes, 16 seconds

but they're not working out here. And it can feel so dissonant because well,

28:23

28 minutes, 23 seconds

they're a good person. Why can't they figure it out, right? And so, um but but

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28 minutes, 30 seconds

a lot of that is from my perspective, it's easy because I know what I want. I have these particular set of skills or I know what they are. And I think you should be able to do it.

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28 minutes, 40 seconds

But being able to separate that and just recognizing um I definitely think parting ways is a gift when it's not good for either, right?

28:50

28 minutes, 50 seconds

Um and I do think that when somebody has either broken the law or broken company policy,

28:58

28 minutes, 58 seconds

um I kind of think those conversations are a little bit easier even though they can be more heart-wrenching because of the

29:05

29 minutes, 5 seconds

choices this person has made. But it seems more messy when it's like it's a lot of little things. It is not working

29:13

29 minutes, 13 seconds

and the other person is not being able to see that. And so it it's not always as clear to them though.

29:19

29 minutes, 19 seconds

They may know they if they feel like they're killing it or they feel like the ask is unreasonable.

29:26

29 minutes, 26 seconds

Um that's hard, but we don't always see eye to eye.

29:29

29 minutes, 29 seconds

Yeah. We don't we don't and often it's it's not personal and we we tend to think that it might it is you know and

29:37

29 minutes, 37 seconds

and everybody's trying to do their best and it goes back to like let let me get their story and and see if I can understand them and

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29 minutes, 46 seconds

and it might not change the course of action but but at least everybody has understanding.

29:53

29 minutes, 53 seconds

Yeah. thing is I it is always personal to the person, all right, who's being told something negative.

30:00

30 minutes

Good point. Good point. You know,

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30 minutes, 1 second

[laughter]

30:02

30 minutes, 2 seconds

I don't pay my mortgage. I feed my children and um yes, and I thought things were one way. I

30:09

30 minutes, 9 seconds

thought this was okay. Most people are not. I mean, of course, there are bad actors at a time who are doing things, but

30:16

30 minutes, 16 seconds

but most people don't don't see or they don't understand or don't have a certain kind of capacity at a given time. And so

30:24

30 minutes, 24 seconds

it feels very unfair that they're not being understood. And so going this empathetic route, even if the outcome of their employment doesn't

30:34

30 minutes, 34 seconds

change, the outcome of how we leave people can change. We want to leave people better than we found them. We do.

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30 minutes, 41 seconds

At the minimum, we want to leave them intact with their dignity in a situation that can feel so undignified, you know, so you know, wretching to lose your job.

30:53

30 minutes, 53 seconds

Oh, it is. That's so true. Thank you for pointing that out because because it it does feel personal to them