Adam Torres and Phyllis Quinlan discuss creating healthy work environments.
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Show Notes:
What are the elements of a healthy workplace? In this episode, Adam Torres and Phyllis Quinlan, President & CEO at MFW Consultants To Professionals, explore MFW Consultants To Professionals and what it takes to create a healthy workplace.
About Phyllis Quinlan
Dr. Quinlan has practiced nursing as a staff nurse, educator, nurse executive, and Internal Coach in a variety of clinical settings. Her full-service consulting firm, established in 1994, specializes in executive coaching, leadership development, and personal coaching. Phyllis serves a wide variety of individual and organizational client needs. Dr. Quinlan collaborates with many organizations to create healthy work environments and effectively address bullying and incivility in the workplace.
Dr. Quinlan is a legal nurse consultant, specializing in defense. Phyllis offers expert nursing opinions on issues addressing nursing practice, nursing support staff, and risk management.
She is a sought-after keynote/plenary speaker known for her compelling live and virtual presentations. Phyllis is a published author and social media influencer. Dr. Quinlan invites you to view her LinkedIn Page and review her Projects to have a better sense of her range of topics.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Phyllis Quinlan, and she’s president and CEO over at MFW Consultants to Professionals.
Phyllis, welcome to the show. Thank you, Adam. Thank you so much. All right, Phyllis. So we got a big topic to cover today. So creating and sustaining a healthy work environment. So lots of entrepreneurs and executives that listen to this show. And I guess just to get us kicked off, like where’d all that begin for you?
Like when, when did you get obsessed with the work environment and making it better for others? You know, I’ve been a professional coach now for the better part of 20 years, and I’m also I’ve been a nurse for over 40 years, so I obviously have been in the health care environment, whether it’s a practitioner, leader, educator, or even a consultant for a number of years, and I.
Listen to an awful lot of feedback from people and they are struggling with elements of healthy work environment. There’s so much that is demanded of people in health care, but also demanded of everyone who’s working in any venue at this point in time. And I do. That’s a leadership imperative for the 21st century is for the managers and the directors, executive leadership to create the healthiest work environment possible in order to not just to track talent, but to retain talent, because at this point in time, post COVID people have, you know, one of the questions I ask people is, you know, tell me about your COVID experience and, you know, You know, to a person, the answer is I’m stronger than I ever thought I could be that said, you’re feeling far more empowered and confident and confident than people give a lot of people credit for.
Everybody wants to talk about burnout. That’s not what I’m hearing. When you say I’m strong. And I ever thought I could be those. That’s the language of growth. That is not the language of traumatic stress. Therefore, if your employees or the talent in your organization, regardless of the venue, is feeling empowered, competent and confident, then you need to create an environment to sustain that or you’re going to bleed talent.
What do you like? I’m always curious about this. So obviously you were in the healthcare industry for a long time and you were, you know, you have a talent in it and you decided at some point that, Hey, I want to be a coach. Like I want to help others in a very specific way. What do you like about being a coach and like coaching and helping others in that type of relationship?
I think when I was in the education part of healthcare you know, I started to realize that I had a really good skill of listening and really focused listening on people, to people. And I think that people are more readily willing to talk to an educator as opposed to an administrator. There’s a crime and punishment energy around administration that Then a little bit more warm and fuzzy around education.
So that led me to start to think about developing or adding the service of personal and executive leadership to my entrepreneurial life. And Just being a coach, just, you know, doing some conventional things, career, you know, what’s my next step in education? What’s my next step in career development?
And then I got a phone call from a nurse who said, you’ve got to help me. I only know how to be a nurse, but, I can’t take care of patients anymore. So my immediate feeling was that she was either a survivor of cancer or some other disease. Oh, wow. Ergonomic injury, you know, injury. And so I really leaned into, you know, well, I got to help this woman.
And, I listened very carefully and I said, without giving me too much of your personal health information, you know , what’s your stamina level? And she started laughing and she says, I’m as healthy as a horse. I just don’t want to see another patient and if I don’t see another physician or nurse again, it’ll be fine.
And you know, great. Cool. Right. You know, I’m like, wait a minute. And I’m asking her a few more questions. Yeah, of course. Of course. Coaching really is around the art of asking great questions. And a few more questions. And then I suddenly realized I had my first client struggling with burnout. Oh, wow. I started listening to what she had been going through and realized that we had, you know, elements of a healthy work environment that were sorely missing in health care, you know, especially around disruptive behaviors of bullying and incivility.
, I really, you know, felt that I was having a renewed call to mission and purpose. To extend my idea of serving people from the clinical aspect and leadership and education aspect of nursing to that of a professional coach. And that’s really how I got redirected. Yeah, I think it’s, it’s so interesting when we have those moments, cause I think about like some of the coaching I’ve done, like I never thought I was going to be, I mean, as a podcaster and some things that I do in building brands and otherwise, now I lead this accelerator and I’m, I’m, coaching individuals in the group setting and sometimes one on one, but I think what I didn’t understand going down that coaching path was And just even being open to it, because I was pretty against it.
I mean, I guess I just didn’t exactly know what I was saying no to in terms of like, like leading and giving in that way of myself. And when I went down that path, I just kind of didn’t realize how much that are my personal, like our cohort members were filling me up and re energizing me in a day to day basis.
So I kind of see sometimes coaching is almost like this circle of energy. You know, between the coach and between the, you know, the person being coached or in whatever the delivery is there, I think it’s a pretty like special relationship and I, and I think if you are, you know someone who really has written on their DNA that you want to be a servant, then I think.
How you manifest that, that is exactly what happens. It is a wonderful circle of giving and receiving. So let’s get into some of the basics. So kind of circling back here, like, what are some of the basic elements that make up a healthy workplace? Well, you know, there are a lot of wonderful thought leaders out there.
You know the Christina Maslach has some wonderful work out there around stress, and of course, what makes up a healthy work environment. The Institute for Health Improvement has a whole initiative that talks about Joy of the workplace or keeping joy in the workplace, but I really usually lean into the American Association of critical care nurses and the work that they did about 15 years ago on the six pillars of a healthy work environment, which for them is skilled communication, true collaboration effective decision making appropriate staffing, meaningful recognition and authentic leadership.
And I use. Builders to really inform developing leaders and established leaders in, you know, , if you start to work with your staff and get their feedback on these six things, you will really have an action plan as to how to go about doing a drill down on, you know, where you’re strong in communication or collaboration and where you still need to do a little work to tighten up the environment so that, you know, Your talent can work seamlessly and at the top of their game.
See the, the problem with an unhealthy environment, or some people will call it a toxic environment, is the distraction that, that, that, you know, happens during that. It’s the distraction from, you know, the focus on a project or, you know you have, People who are chronically uncivil or actually bullying that are interfering with somebody’s focus on doing patient care or, or even leadership tasks.
So it’s important to be able to, you know, really lean in as a mid leader or even, you know, a director, executive leader. into saying, well, you know, my local department or my local unit will be the healthiest or the best it can be. And we’re going to work out communication issues and we’re going to find out what true collaboration looks like.
And we’re going to make sure that if we have issues with staffing, what kind of staffing do we actually need? Is it more clinicians or do we need more support staff? So, you know, really engaging your staff. In doing a drill down around these six pillars of a healthy work environment that was put out by the critical care nurses Association gives you a wonderful start as to developing your next engagement plan.
And so, I mean, is there any and I don’t know if I’m setting this benchmark right or not and asking this question, but is like I like to set it as this so like post covid I feel like like to me. The the focus on like this healthy workplace, not saying it shouldn’t have always been one and otherwise, but I feel like now more than ever, like, , it’s a big deal.
And it’s important. Like, am I off on that? I’d be interested to hear your opinion on that. I think there’s going to be, you know, there are some defining moments in people’s lives, you know, like the parents. I’d have been the depression in World War Two. Yeah, exactly. For me, it was Vietnam and the women’s movement, you know you know, and I think that , in years to come, we’re going to be talking about the industry and the profession, the caring professions involved in healthcare pre COVID.
And, you know, I, I define professional caregivers as anyone working in a healthcare environment or setting, regardless of how they manifest their caring, there’s a choice to be made. And it’s not just usually good benefits and great pay because it’s decent benefits and decent pay. But, you know, no one’s getting rich being in, you know, in healthcare that way.
So there’s, there’s something else that’s calling you to be of service to humanity and it makes them among the most generous people on the planet. That said there was just this whole COVID and the response to COVID that really shook everybody. But for professional caregivers and those of us in the healthcare venue, we never got a break.
You know, some people got furloughed and some people, you know, stayed home or they could work from home. You know, those of us in the healthcare industry fought COVID for 12, 10 hours, whatever our shift was. We And then we went home and lived with COVID, you know, see it previously, , if there was a weather emergency or some other emergency, you, you did your shift, , you offered your services.
And then you went home and had your life and you heard from that. That didn’t happen with COVID. It was 24, 7, 4. Straight on. And then when we started to recover from COVID, you know, the, the rest of the country started to come back slowly, but not us. It was hit the ground running. Okay, let’s pick up where we left off.
And for many people who there was that we’re very grateful to some very wonderful transformational humanistic leaders who were with them every step of the way. But what reports that came out, you know, and the reports from the American nurses association , and others that said that many people felt abandoned and angry, that leadership kind of phoned it in and kind of pushed them out into the forefront and we’re nowhere to be found those, you know, that’s probably some of the transformational moments.
Now, the post COVID pieces, because when you have people who have navigated through fear and learning and growth, you know, they came out of this transformed in a way that was empowering and confirmed their sense of confidence and confidence. You can’t go back and lead them the same way anymore. They won’t be led the old way.
You know, and if you try to force that type of leadership on them. Or you, you, you don’t address some of the unhealthy aspects of your work environment, then you’re going to bleed talent and they will come back. How does, I want to jump around here a little bit. How does complacency work into this equation?
Like, whether from leadership or otherwise? I think some of the complacency pieces are really in and around addressing the disruptive behaviors of bullying and chronic incivility in the workplace. You know, I think there’s a laissez faire way, like, you know, listen, you’re both adults, everybody should just get along, you know, let me know when you work it out, you know, I want to get involved in this.
And that was, and that was, I mean, that was a school of thought for like a generation at least. For sure. Like your, your problems that, you know, here, here, you, you, you not segregating, but like kind of siloing things like that was a school of thought. Exactly. And we are realizing now that, you know, the, the drain on, of, of chronically uncivil behavior and we’re not a lot of people, you know, I, when I crisscrossed the country talking about this, people usually say 90%.
85 to 90 percent of my people come in really ready, willing, and work to work in a world class care and, , work in a team like manner. It’s, you know, the other 10 to 15 percent that want to engage in disruptive behavior. The smaller proportion That are actually bullying, abusive behaviors, and the larger portion of disruptive behavior is you’re chronically uncivil.
So to, to distinguish the two, if you close your eyes and you think of that person who, if they called in sick, even though you’re working short, you’re going to have a better day. That’s the cause. I’m simple person, you know, you know, and we have them and we all know them, you know, they suck the energy out of the room.
They’re constantly talking about, you know, private lives and drama, drama, drama, and they just they can’t get to work on time. They can’t get back from break on time. They can’t finish that work on time and they are a constant. You know, irritant and then they are really a distraction to putting out good work and focusing on what you need to do.
And many times your approach to pick up the pieces of their work that they didn’t do because again, your ship doesn’t want to. They’re complacent about wanting to lean in and hold somebody accountable. It’s so much easier to go to someone who’s. You know responsible and accountable and say could you give me a hand and then that person says yeah, okay But that’s not the way it is anymore.
People are like listen, you know We’re gonna we’re going to have a level playing field here coming back and when I talk to Executives who are having trouble getting people back into the workplace They want to stay hybrid or they want to you know work from home most of the time and I I say to them Well, what are some of the questions that your people are asking?
Asking you when you contact them and they say, well, the first first question that they ask is, well, who’s come back to the office and you tell them, yeah, that’s interesting. I’m going to say hybrid. I’m going to stay remote, you know, because they’re naming the people who you really didn’t realize how difficult they were to work with until you were home furloughed.
And then you’re like, wait a minute, I don’t need that. I don’t need this. I don’t need that extra drama in my life. That, that doesn’t add to my life. I get it. I never really thought about that, but you’re right. I get it. What’s happening. People are, are like, I was so much more productive. I was focused. I enjoyed my work and I didn’t realize what it was until all of a sudden people started.
Saying, can you come back and, you know, this person came back and that one came back. And then you’re realizing, oh God, I can’t invite that back into my life. No, thank you. Mm-Hmm. , wow. That’s that’s there’s some people that I’m, I know I’m having aha moment. I haven’t worked in that type of environment a while, but, but I feel like there’s some people that are listening to this right now where it’s like, oh yeah, that does that, that resonates.
So, you know, with. With leaders. And obviously there’s only, you know, there’s only so much we can do on a, you know, 20, 20 some minute podcast episode, but like, where do, where do, you know, where do leaders start with something like this to start in terms of having that dialogue or even kind of considering this, assuming this is new information, it’s kind of been on their mind and now they’re starting to think about like, what do I, what do I do?
Like, where does some leaders start? Well, I think the first place to start is if you’re in middle management, you need to go up to you know, executive leadership. If you’re in executive leadership you know, or top management, then you would, you would want to certainly reach out to your human resource people because you do not want to step on some human resource laws.
Okay. You want to make sure that they’re That will address the problem, but keep your employment and your reputation safe in the process because it’s unfortunate. Those who indulge in chronic incivility may not be savvy enough to sabotage you as you are doing your job because it takes a tremendous amount of Of time, effort, resources, and documentation to justify either progressive discipline or suspension and termination.
But if you take on a bully, someone who I call a narcissist with a license or certification, okay? You’re going to take on a bully. You better have a coordinated effort with executive leadership and human resources because they are very different in the way they comport themselves, the way they think, and the tactics that they use.
And you could find yourself well intentioned to create this healthier work environment by addressing this bullying behavior, and then they will flip it. So that you are being portrayed as the person is being abusive and bullying and then you get walked to the door. Wow. Yeah. So it’s important to understand that the an actual bully is going to use two things.
Okay, they’re going to use two dysfunctional forms of communication. One of them is, is plausible deniability. Okay. You know, I, I’m sorry that person got offended. I was just trying to tease them. I was just trying to joke with them, make them feel like one of the guys or one of the gals when actually it was abusive.
Okay. Or they’re going to use gaslighting, you know, which means that it’s, it’s you, not me. It’s you, not me. You’re the one with the problem. You’re the one with the problem. And if you don’t, And how narcissists misuse communication, then you could really be in trouble unless you have a coordinated effort with executive leadership and human resources.
The the effort it takes to address these behaviors is arduous, I’ll make make no mistake. It requires a lot of documentation ongoing, and depending how long the person’s been with the organization, it might take months or even a year of documentation to situate yourself to where you would withstand.
arbitration or mediation if it comes to termination. But what’s important to realize is those who are chronically uncivil have a low emotional intelligence and can be taught or remediated, if you will, developed professionally to be full fledged engaged employees. Those who are in, in, are engaging in bullying, abusive behavior, narcissistic bullying behavior, etc.
Are never going to be remediated. The only answer is for you to march them to the door at some point as long as it takes because the first thing for changing your behavior is actually believing that something needs to be changed and a narcissist will only believe that the world needs to change around them.
They’re fine. It’s you. Well, well, this is great, Phyllis, and I know that we’re just barely getting into like what it takes to create a healthy workplace. But that being said and we’re about out of time for this episode and I know there’s some that may want to continue the conversation and dialogue and connect with you and your team at MFW Consultants.
So how do people do that, Phyllis? Well, you can certainly reach out to me on my website which would be www. mfwconsultants. com. Or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, which is probably the easiest thing to do. Phyllis S. Quinlan on LinkedIn. And you know, connect with me and then we can start a conversation messaging back and forth.
Fantastic. And for everybody listening, we’ll, we’ll put all that information in the show notes. So you can just click on the links and, you know, head right on over and speaking of our audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters or engaging in an episode and you need an invitation, hey, hit that subscribe button.
This is your invitation. We, we sure, this is a daily show. We have more episodes coming out each and every day. So please subscribe. Definitely want you to stay in tune with all the rockstar leaders we bring on. And if you’re a long term listener and haven’t left the review yet, Hey, we sure do appreciate reviews.
So feel free to do that when you get a second Phyllis, it has been a pleasure. Again, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you, Adam
