We need empathy, kindness and self awareness from our leaders……..

This is a story of struggle, and determination to learn and grow through the shit. I had a conscious intention to learn resilience, so I kept my focus on that.

Lots of people are no doubt worried about submitting their story in case people recognise it. And that’s fair enough.

The common affects of fear are downward spiral thinking, catastrophising, blaming others etc. So I’m moving past mine by writing this, and worrying about what I can and can’t say.

It’s anonymous for a reason. There are no names or companies mentioned. It’s not a witch hunt. It is about growth though and being generous to hopefully help others with our story. So here goes. This will probably help me…..

The other year I was working somewhere I was so excited to be. I’d been there a little while.

They had a great reputation and name. I worked on some incredible projects, I didn’t take for granted how lucky I was.

But it was the toughest place I’d worked.

Someone sexually harassed someone, when clients were in the building.

Sexist comments were frequent, from people who should know better.

Someone put a blow up (sex looking) doll in my chair.

It was like Mad Max in adland.

As much as I tried, I didn’t feel safe. Lots of people and behaviour seemed to have no boundaries.

I learnt how important psychological safety was there. Trust is built on this. There wasn’t much trust.

There were some great people there. People I really respect and will keep in touch with. And there were some arseholes. They infected the culture. And it should have been dealt with a longggg time ago. So it made you question senior management. Why were they allowing this?

I went through gruelling fertility stuff there, and for anyone who’s been through it, it’s probably pretty life changing.

I did some sessions with the hospital’s counselling service and they took me through an exercise about values. Mine vs the companies.

Clearly there wasn’t a good fit and I probably needed to leave while I was going through stuff. Oh shit. Was now the time to jump and have no plan of what to do next.

I told my ‘sort of boss’ I wanted to do less days. He asked how many days. I didn’t respond. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was less days or no days. I didn’t explain my personal situation for obvious reasons, I felt so vulnerable, maybe I should have.

Suddenly there was a meeting with another very senior person plus him, maybe a month or so after. I had been doing 5 days a week, now I was to do 1 day a week. And they expected this drop immediately. Someone was taking over the special project I’d be working on for the last year.

I was long term freelance but I forced myself to stand my ground and say my contract was 1 week notice, so they had to honour that. Then we could start a new contract on 1 day a week. It was brutal. My life was brutal at the time too (for many other reasons).

One of the senior leaders made a sort of joke (but probably not) that I should be careful I didn’t get fired for gross misconduct. What. Why would they say that. I had literally given them everything.

I dug deep, very deep and kept going. I set up a really successful programme on my other days, which launched and is now scaling globally. The CEO of the programme I set up has also been really tricky. So it’s made me pretty intrigued about people with power.

I’ve kept going, there are many more elements to the last year, it’s been a big one but I’ll hold on all that or we’ll be here for a while.

I had lots of acupuncture and coaching to help me through it all. I’ve been doing yoga, and learning meditation (properly). I’ve asked for help from people who aren’t old friends, but industry friends, and they’ve been truly amazing.

It’s been a tough and disappointing year. But it’s also been one of the best, in a funny way.

I’ve re-framed things as learning opportunities and I’ve certainly had numerous ones.

I’m doing some productivity coaching at the moment, for multiple teams, getting to test out my love of ‘agile’ ways of working. We’ve helped collectively turn around a crisis client in 1 month.

Someone in the team has some personal stuff she’s going through and opened up to me about it. It will be on-going. So I asked what mental health support the company might be able to offer. A senior lead’s response was ‘we all have shit to deal with’.

We do. Some more than others. Some people put their shit onto you. Or expect you to just take it. We all need to learn how to deal with it because unfortunately it’s part of life. The shit hits the fan and sometimes multiple fans all at once, spraying it round everywhere :)

So I’m asking senior leaders in 2020….have empathy, kindness and self awareness. Make someone feel seen and build psychological safety. Be conscious of the power you hold and influence. I bet it creates a better, more resilient culture and energy.

Tips for anyone going through something similar:

• Let go of negative thought patterns. Give yourself the support you need to do this

• We need to release what’s not ours to carry and allow space of what is (trust me on this one). Focus on your values and stick to them

• Notice what makes you feel bad. Pay really good attention to it. It’s telling you a lot

• Meditation helps to release stress, you’ll notice the difference pretty quickly

• Keep going, the following year things will look very different