Toxic workplaces persist, even in the face of organizations working in DEIB and trying to create cultures of organizational safety. The challenge is that there’s a knowledge gap. It’s difficult to hold individual leaders accountable for their behaviors when it’s normalized for them.
The problem isn’t a lack of knowledge and doesn’t require a training of our leaders; it’s an unlearning that needs to happen, a gaining of wisdom that only happens through talking to others about how you and your behavior impacts them.
On this week’s podcast, Dr. Kevin Sansberry II and I are talking about how to eliminate toxic workplaces, why they persevere, and what lived experiences and privilege has to do with it.
One of the big messages to take away from this episode is that if it matters to one person, it matters. So if one person recognizes there’s a disconnect in behavior or communication, leaders need to own that and do something about it.
This is a powerful conversation, and when we own our behaviors and shift our mindsets, we can make Mondays a whole lot less stressful.
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About Dr. Kevin Sansberry II:
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II is a behavioral scientist and executive coach whose inspiring work is driven by the need for evidence-based, inclusive, and equitable approaches to urgently and proactively transform and coach leaders, eradicating toxic behaviors that threaten profitability, innovation, and the overall wellbeing.
Kevin is regularly sought after to speak, consult, and coach organizations around the world related to his expertise in toxic leadership and toxic organizational culture.
Kevin has experience in various settings such as professional sports, higher education, nonprofits, sales, and other large complex organizations. Kevin has written extensively on topics in various areas such as CEO narcissism, abusive supervision, workplace authenticity and is the creator and host of the top podcast focused on toxic leadership, The Toxic Leadership Podcast which reached as high as the number four nonprofit podcast in the United States in 2021.
Kevin earned his doctorate in business administration from The University of Missouri-St. Louis where he focused on the impact of abusive supervision on organizational culture/climate, and employee coping behaviors. Kevin received his MBA from The University of Missouri-Kansas City with an emphasis in leadership & change in human systems and general management and his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Central Missouri.
Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
leaders, behavior, people, workplace, toxic, impact, toxicity, talk, organizations, mindsets, individuals, coach, employee, podcast, conversation, gap, person, kevin, mental health, hear
SPEAKERS
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II, Lindsay Recknell
Lindsay Recknell 00:01
You are a People Leader or a HR professional, working hard to create an amazing employee experience for your team and your organization. But between the operational tasks of your job, managing emotions and politics both up and down the corporate ladder, and trying to find some semblance of work/life integration in your own life, I suspect you could be overwhelmed and burnt-out. Even the thought of navigating the complicated world of mental health at work probably seems like too much to handle. Let this podcast can be your not-so-secret weapon to help fix that! I am your host, Lindsay Recknell, and my mission is to help great leaders like you feel less awkward and more confident talking about mental health at work so you can stress less, take more action and continue to make a valuable difference in your job as a leader, positively impacting the lives of your people. I’ll be bringing you the experts, insights and actions that will give you the skills you need to navigate mental health in the workplace and foster a workplace where everyone’s mental health can thrive.
Lindsay Recknell 01:03
This week’s guest is Dr. Kevin Sansbury II, is a behavioral scientist and executive coach whose inspiring work is driven by the need for evidence-based, inclusive, and equitable approaches to urgently and proactively transform and coach leaders, eradicating toxic behaviors that threaten profitability, innovation, and the overall wellbeing.
Kevin is regularly sought after to speak, consult, and coach organizations around the world related to his expertise in toxic leadership and toxic organizational culture.
Kevin has experience in various settings such as professional sports, higher education, nonprofits, sales, and other large complex organizations. Kevin has written extensively on topics in various areas such as CEO narcissism, abusive supervision, workplace authenticity and is the creator and host of the top podcast focused on toxic leadership, The Toxic Leadership Podcast which reached as high as the number four nonprofit podcast in the United States in 2021.
Kevin earned his doctorate in business administration from The University of Missouri-St. Louis where he focused on the impact of abusive supervision on organizational culture/climate, and employee coping behaviors. Kevin received his MBA from The University of Missouri-Kansas City with an emphasis in leadership & change in human systems and general management and his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Central Missouri.
Lindsay Recknell 02:08
Before we get started, I want your time to be valuable here so in order to get the most from this podcast, head to my website at https://mentalhealthforleaders.com and download the Guide to Influence & Impact at Work which has the step-by-step action plan you’ll need to embed a focus on mental health into the employee experience of your workplace. It’s totally free and will give you the start to your action plan – steps to follow to create engagement, build a budget and a method to measure the value, influence and impact you’ll be making as you lead this transformational change in your organization. We haven’t been taught the mental health skills we need to truly lead our organizations into the future so let this Guide and podcast be the advantage you need to elevate your career, your leadership skills and the positive impact you’ll bring to your organization. Head to https://mentalhealthforleaders.com and download the free Guide to Influence & Impact at Work now. The opportunity is yours and I can’t wait to see what you’ll do! Alright, now lets get to our guest.
Lindsay Recknell 03:06
Now let’s get to our guest. Hello, Kevin. It’s wonderful to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 03:11
Hello, thanks for inviting me happy to be here. It is such a pleasure. I’m looking forward to this conversation all around toxic leadership, especially at work. And so maybe I’ve read your bio in the introduction, but maybe we can hear from you who you are, what you do and who you serve. Yeah, so I’m behavior scientist and I work with organizations across the country related to things ranging from anti harassment, anti racism, restructuring and you know, in doing insights relate to organizational culture and climate. I’ve done a lot of work in policy revamps, you name it.
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 03:54
The work the reason why I got into this work, or how I got into this work is, you know, my background is in human resources. I’m a former executive in HR. I’m a former executive as relates to DEI. And I do consulting with these organizations to further some of the research literature that I do, as well as kind of bridging the gap between, you know, what’s the rigorous we do in the academic side, but also what’s relevant for businesses. Because one of the things that I see is that a lot of these these toxic behaviors that I talked about, and many other people talk about, are seemingly normalized, and in the American workplace and workplaces around the world. And I want to kind of be a part of the movement to eradicate these behaviors so that you know, everybody can thrive in the workplace.
Lindsay Recknell 04:39
And that is a movement I can definitely get behind. Can you tell us Can you tell me a little about what you mean with that language of toxic workplaces? How can we identify if we are experiencing one?
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 04:56
I typically ask some of my clients describe a Sunday night To me, and that kind of tells you everything you need to know. But really, as you think about, you know what this looks like in the workplace, it’s really behaviors that seemingly lead to relationships deteriorating. So if you think about the difference between like constructive and destructive behaviors, that’s really kind of a first like dichotomy that I would describe. Meaning is, are the behaviors bringing people together? Are the behaviors bringing people apart? Are they causing me to have, you know, the stress or the or the distress or you stress? Basically, I’ll use those framings. And so the way people see it in a workplace, it could be things like micromanaging, it can be things like microaggressions, could be part of that. It could be things like, you know, projection of stress to other folks. So I’m upset about one thing, or I’m stressed about one thing, but I’m projecting it to everybody else. It could be, you know, all those kinds of things. I mean, I’ve had clients where it’s like, oh, this person beats on tables, this person yells, this person is icing down on emails and projects that I’m supposed to be on. And so the behavior looks that’s what that’s so that’s, that’s why when I started, I described the buckets, because it’s easier to describe those buckets. Because do it? Does it bring us together? Or does it drive us apart as a collective? That’s what I’m talking about. But based on a person’s lived experience that could look different?
Lindsay Recknell 06:22
So if I could kind of summarize, if we’re looking on whether we are living in a toxic workplace, it is, is the behaviors and the relationships we’re building, bringing us together and pulling us apart?
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 06:37
Yeah, like, are literally are we building like, or are we ripping them apart? And, and again, some of the some of the, you know, things that people do in the workplace, they may be doing things that seemingly don’t look toxic, putting quotes, on face value, but they may have negative impact on folks to the relationships and to the ability for other people to thrive in the workplace. Well, and and the impact that these scenarios have on people is going to be different for everyone as well. And I think that that’s something we don’t talk about a lot is, you know, if it matters to you what matters. And often if we if it doesn’t impact us, as much as it impacts someone else, we can kind of discredit that, do you see that come up in organizations? Absolutely. And the key there is you talk about privilege and power in the workplace. You know, typically, if I’m not like so, so the gender pay gap is a good example.
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 07:36
I’m a male cisgender male, and the gender pay gap doesn’t impact me from the standpoint of that it would impact you. And so I have a privilege not to think about it, you don’t. And so with that being said, I have to make a conscious choice to fight for the gender pay gap. And I do. And that’s why I’m brought it up. And so with that being said, in the workplace, the forms of power and privilege that we have, it sometimes makes invisible, the toxicities that we are perpetuating, because we are in a leadership position, because we’re the manager, we have all you know, we have the knowledge from the board, and nobody else does. But since we do, we’re not even seeing the toxicity or the negative impact that’s occurring, because we have privileged enough to be impacted by it. And so my take on that is when I see it, typically how that shows up is like, you’ll get an employee survey. And you’ll see some negative comments from some employees or whatever about whatever it might be. The individual in leadership role might say, Oh, no, I’m discrediting that experience that experience, then I don’t see it. So it’s not real. So that’s what tends to happen when we start talking about toxic behavior in the workplace. People put on those rose colored glasses, and they don’t see that things because it doesn’t impact them directly. And I think that’s a false human flaw.
Lindsay Recknell 08:56
I was going to ask you if, in part of your work, if you see a big gap between how leaders are perceiving the level of toxicity in the workplace, and how frontline frontline workers or functional, you know, line level leaders are seeing it? But what I’m hearing you say is absolutely, and if it comes from it potentially comes from a place of privilege, or a place of more information and communication and that kind of thing. Absolutely. How do we close that gap?
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 09:24
We have to…Well, first off, I put a lot of onus on individuals in leadership roles, because they do have organizational basis of power. They do have formalized power. And so what that means is I look for how can we promote individuals who have the competencies to be leaders, and not the competencies to manage task. And so that looks at how do we pick how do we look at people and hire for people who are able to inspire and lead people, which is a big ask, and not simply just because they’ve worked there The longest? Or because they’re able to like, do the tasks appropriately or what have you, it has to be more than that. So it goes back, it goes to that first. And then two, it goes to what kinds of like sofa folks in positions currently? Are your antennas up? And what are they listening to? What frequency are they set on? If your antennas are up, you’re saying, Yes, I’m aware of my organization? What’s the frequency you’re set on? Are you set on? You’re going to be defensive every time you hear something? Are you set on? You’re gonna be in disbelief every time you hear something that does doesn’t agree with your beliefs, what are you set on. And so I think all leaders need to be introspective to to examine how they show up in these positions, because leaders are under a lot of pressure. And but it is not in leadership’s best interest, no matter how comforting it is to ignore, ignore other people’s experiences. So I think to close that gap leaders have to learn to dissenter, their own comfort, and truly lead a team. And I think that oil.
Lindsay Recknell 11:09
I absolutely agree. The whole comfort level or putting leaders putting themselves in uncomfortable positions, I think is the opportunity. So often that you were like you’re talking about we we elevate people to leadership positions, because they’re really great at their job, they’re really great at doing tasks and activities. And they’re not necessarily great at being leaders, either because they’ve never been taught to be leaders, or they just aren’t self aware or or however we get them to those places.
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 11:39
Correct.
Lindsay Recknell 11:40
And I think from a even if we start from a place of self awareness, putting people into uncomfortable positions, or asking them to do to show up authentic authentically, is a way to raise that self awareness from conscious or unconscious to conscious. Yep. How so if there’s if there’s leaders listening right now that are saying, well, I don’t, I got promoted. It’s great. But my company doesn’t give me any training in how to reduce toxicity. What do you say to those folks who want to be better, but don’t have an environment where that’s available to them? Necessarily?
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 12:20
Yeah, well, first off with the type of behaviors that we’re discussing the day, there’s not necessarily training that will be impactful for somebody because this is not like a transactional, you’re not it’s not a knowledge gap. This is more so about more. So about what do you need to unlearn as a leader not what do you need to learn? And so the way I look at it is the best way to unlearn is not necessarily rote memorization. And like that, learning something, it’s really working to gain wisdom. And so where that wisdom can be gathered, can be from talking to individuals about how you impact them. So your best training opportunities to talk to people who report to you and ask them, Well, how do I show up, do a 360 survey, there are plenty of templates you could find online. A second way to get this, you know, to like show, if you want to show up differently, and you know, kind of reduce the toxicity that you manifest is to partner with a coach.
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 13:16
And so I’m an executive coach for a lot of leaders in this area where they like, look, I want to do it and we do 360s We do Enneagram we do Myers Briggs, we do a lot of different assessments, conflict assessments, all those kind of things. But with that being said, having a coach be able to like read emails, and like talk about situations that occurred and like talk through things. Most leaders don’t spend enough time in reflection, meaning most leaders don’t spend enough time even gaining the wisdom because they’re alright, always go go go, you know, everything’s about present, check the box, get done, you’re done. You know, you’re late, you know, that’s how that’s how a lot of leaders live their lives. And so by having these moments of reflection, whether that is through engaging with those who impact the most, and or getting a coach on board, to be a part of that accountability system, I think is a great first step in is relatively more impactful than training.
Lindsay Recknell 14:07
No, I love that unlearning getting the wisdom and the appreciation that it isn’t a knowledge gap. I really I liked that perspective a lot. And you mentioned something else, though, also that’s resonating with me is executives, and leaders don’t have a lot of time to stop and do that reflection. How can we help them prioritize that?
Lindsay Recknell 14:34
Is that a policy change? Is that a you know?
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 14:37
No, no, good question. I love that question. So it’s, you know, the type of work that I do in my theory of change starts at the mindsets, it starts at the mindsets level, because that impacts your behaviors, which then impacts your systems and policies, right. So in order to get that to make that real, you have to make it important. And so, you know, again, when you know we’re not coaching with individuals we’re talking about, well, why don’t you spend time on yourself? Why did Why do you work weekends? Because imagine what signal that sends. And we dig into like the why behind the behavior. And it’s, it starts there. Because if you really cared about it, whether you had a policy or not, it really wouldn’t work.
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 15:21
That’s like organizations right now have like flexible workplace policies, but still have mindsets of butts and seats, or have mindset. So these core hours, you got to be there. And then if you’re, if you know, if you come in the office the most, you’re probably gonna get promoted the most, because you look like you’re more committed, we still have those mindsets. So again, it’s the mindsets that have to shift and I think leaders need to like hone in on why they, why they feel like they don’t have time to reflect on whatever that might be. Because a coaching session is only an hour every other week. So if you don’t have an hour every other week, that’s that’s some that’s saying something else. That’s time management needed. Maybe that’s something else stuff, changing priorities. Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot there. But it’s only an hour every other week, it’s not necessarily saying you have to like dedicate an hour a day on coaching, it’s more so spend time just having these conversations and build that into the schedule. It could even be something like, I’m gonna do a micro habit of my first 30 minutes of the day, I’m going to reflect or write before I’m going to bed, I’m going to journal something real quick, or you know, just things like that, just adding in where you can do a micro habit, because one of the things I want to dispel is, when I talk about changing behavior and transformation, or what have you, it’s never going to be some big thing. I mean, think New Year’s resolutions, how many of those failed by now, right? So it’s not necessarily saying it has to be this big thing. Because what matters is not the size of the change it matters is the consistency of the change.
Lindsay Recknell 16:58
Yeah, the consistency and embedding it or making it able to be embedded into regular life, so that it just becomes how you show up. And not that it’s a thing you have to consciously do all the time. I like that a lot. Yeah, um, something you mentioned as well about kind of aligning, aligning behavior with reality. And I’m thinking about, I’m thinking about employee. So, you know, we’ve been talking a lot about leaders. But if an employee is recognizing that there’s a disconnect, that the actions of their colleagues and their team, their team members, or their team leaders, is pulling the team apart is is you know, contributing to this toxic culture?
Lindsay Recknell 17:47
How can we empower employees to do something about that, and to align, you know, the behaviors that they’re seeing every day to probably the values that are stated from the C suite.
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 18:01
At those points, people don’t necessarily have less power, they just forget the power that they have. And one of the things that I like to remind people of is, if you see a disconnect, in whatever that might be the behavior, what somebody is saying and what they say they mean, you know, impact versus intent, whatever. How can I talk to the leader in a language that matters to them? How can I share this disconnect in a way that’s like, hey, leader, I know you don’t want people quitting, but I think people are gonna be quitting if we keep doing this, like, how can you make it matter to them? Because it a lot of times we’d like to, we’d like to speak to people in ways that matter to us, and wonder why people don’t listen, or wonder why people don’t hear us. And so the lesson learned here is you are never going to change anybody’s behavior. But to nudge behavior is how do you create an environment where somebody else is going to be willing to change their behavior, that’s really what the key is. And so by doing doing it, the way of speaking their language, that’s a way where they at least will understand where you’re coming from, and more likely be able to consider that behavior change. So your leader is more likely to be able to listen or be able to hear you. That’s one. So that’s if I were doing like a direct confrontation approach with the leader in question. Two, I need to analyze, so different approaches, I need to analyze what my resources are around me. And so what do I see? And who else in this environment is impacted the same way, or can benefit by the change in maybe a different way, but they can benefit by the change and you know, very similar. So I would look at like, Okay, do I have that with coworkers? Because maybe maybe we can band together and have this conversation with a person or what have you. My HR department, maybe that’s an option. Could it be like an ombuds person? That’s like, we have an ombuds department or something like that. That could be an option. Is that our union? Rep, if we have a union rep, isn’t that an option, so whatever those resources that may exist, to lift up changes that are necessary, I need to band together with individuals who viewed the change similarly, or who could benefit by the change, maybe differentially, but they can benefit by the change, nonetheless, whatever that might be. So that’s those are just a few small ways to think about it cognitively.
Lindsay Recknell 20:25
And what about, it’s so brilliant, and I am, like getting other people together, it D personalizes it also. And so it helps when you’re going to the leader or the the change in trying to change the question that behavior in question. It doesn’t make it about you versus them, which I really like.
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 20:45
But and let me say this, just just telling somebody that about the behavior that they’re doing is not going to change their behavior, either, though. So I want to be clear that us making someone aware of the impact of their behavior is kind of step zero. But there’s a whole bunch of steps after that, that they have to take to change their own behavior. And there might need to be pressure from like, whatever leaders, other leadership or a policy or whatever, like there might need to be external pressure, or what have you, because one of the things I want to say about behavior in general is all behavior makes perfect sense. All behavior. And so what that means is the source of the behavior in question whether it is positive or negative, it makes perfect sense to the person that is evoking that behavior. And so believe me, it’s going to take more time than we think, than just getting a coalition of folks together to tell me that my behavior is toxic, or what have you, it’s going to take more than that, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take compassion. So
Lindsay Recknell 21:48
Well, and it’s going to take courage, because the thing that I’m thinking about is, if someone is toxic, there’s a likelihood that they’re not going to take it well. And the potential for retribution against that individual or that group of people who brought this to the attention of the toxic person who now might be feeling embarrassment, or shame or anger or confrontational. How do you help folks get around that fear? And the likelihood that they will just not do it? Because of that great risk?
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 22:27
Yeah, I don’t. Who am I to tell somebody their fear is not relevant? Because it is. And so, for me, we talk about the fear. And I say, Well, why, you know, why? Where does that fear come from? And my goal is not necessarily to help them get over it, per se, my fear is, or my goal is to help them find a solution that works for them. Because that’s probably going to be the one they believe in the most, right? So as the person not involved in it, I’m coaching somebody, yeah, get over the fear data. So like, what what I would do is say like, Okay, your fear is valid. I hear you, I affirm that, what else exist? And so it could be well, there’s an anonymous, anonymous box, I can put my, my thoughts into, will that work? Is that do you think that’ll work for you? And let’s talk about that. I can go I can have a conversation confidential confidentially with HR, maybe I trust somebody in HR, will that work for you? Let’s talk about that. And so yeah, one of the things that I want to just sit state is like, a lot of approaches that tend to be presented as it relates to like, toxicity or workplace situations, a lot of them come from a place of privilege, where individuals may have some kind of form of empowerment that other people don’t have, where I can’t be courageous. Like, I’m, it’s not easy to be courageous. And not everybody has that benefit. And so I mean, you, if that’s your job, and you’re literally going to be worried about your next paycheck the next month. That fear makes sense to me. If you don’t have a family network where you know, you’re fighting poverty of ecohome your fate on a support network, if you lose your job, I totally understand that. If you’re a single parent, and you’re like, I totally understand that fear. And so with that being said, we as practitioners must look at, well, what else can be done? Like how can we create anonymous situations for people to report? I’m gonna say this out loud, because we need to do this in the United States. How can we create legislation where workplace bullying is actually illegal? Where we can like outlaw the behavior in general, the bullying at least, we’re doesn’t have to be you have to prove a protected class is violated like why can’t it just be workplace bullying is bad, like, why can’t we just have that I wonder? We need to create hotlines for individuals for that very, very reason that we’re discussing. So there are a lot of systemic issues that are outside of the organization that are more of a problem too, that we need to work on as a company as a as a as a coach. to run as a society, at least in the States. And that’s why I describe the work that I do as a movement, because there’s work to do, not only at the individual level, at the organizational level, but at the systemic level. Because we should not be having a conversation about workplace bullying and toxicity in 2022. We should not be having to read news articles about, you know, violations of people’s working rights, we should not be having to have all these conversations about burnout, when literally everybody still has burnout, we just have more blogs about it. That shouldn’t be the case. We’re not even doing a root cause we’re just talking about it. So like, Yeah, I think we have to address a lot of these things at the systemic level in order to see the long lasting change.
Lindsay Recknell 25:45
You are speaking my language, my friend, this whole getting to getting to the causes of these things and fixing it at the source, as opposed to putting a BandAid on a gunshot wound? What can we do? Even if we’re just thinking about organizationally, some of the things that you just spoke about having a hotline, having an anonymous box, having a you know, impartial Organizational Psychology, on psychologist on staff, you know, all of these things, these are the mechanisms that we can put into place. So that our, our employees, our team members feel like they can report these things, they can help to create psychological safety without fear of retribution without fear of their job and losing their home. Because they don’t have a job. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it and it doesn’t have to be hard, like the things that you just talked about. I mean, how hard is it to get an extra phone number and publish it out there and communicate it to everyone? It doesn’t have to be these big, overwhelming things, that would have a huge impact.
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 26:51
Right. And I think what tends to happen is the moment leaders. You know, heads get a little big when you get leadership titles, and people’s ego and defensiveness, you know, defensive walls come up when we want to protect our own, you know, where, you know, we, we’ve we, we get in a leadership role, and we like become the leadership role. No, you’re still like a person with a just a title like, right. But like in our society, we tend to like idolize and glorify these leadership titles in a way, our power, our the way we treat power is weird. And so I say that to say, leaders have to remember that they are human to, which that means you literally can and will make mistakes just like everybody else in the firm. And the difference is, your board may not hear about the mistakes as much as you see our mistakes. And so what that means is leaders need to just demystify themselves and like, get off that perfectionism train. And when people bring things up, instead of being defensive about it, how can you show up and listen? How can you show up and say, Well, I didn’t, you know, regardless of my intent, I didn’t know that impact. How can you show up as human as you want everybody else to show up, we do all these fireside chats, we do all this meditation, we do all this stuff and hire consultants to talk about the workplace. And yet, guarantee you less look five years in the future, we’re still gonna be talking about the same stuff. And that is because the mindsets haven’t shifted. We’ve tried to start system first and not looked at why the systems are still in place that we have, we started looking at behaviors barely, and couldn’t Band Aid fixes on stuff. We didn’t even look at the mindsets. People don’t want to look at the mindsets. And so we have to really look at how we put leaders in these positions in the first place. Because that’s how that’s gonna make it a lot easier. And for those who are in the play in leadership positions now need to truly take a step back and examine their impact on people.
Lindsay Recknell 28:56
It’s just music to my ears. Everybody needs to hear this episode of this podcast, let me tell you, and then they need to call you. And so when they tell you, how do they get ahold of you?
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 29:08
Yeah, yeah. So I can be reached at the https://toxicleadershippodcast.com. And then all my socials, Instagram, whether that is Twitter, all that it’s @toxicleadershippodcast at @toxicleadershippodcast. You could find all my contact information on the site. You can also reach me on LinkedIn. I’m @DrKevinSansbury. I’m pretty quick to respond and always willing to help out you know, whether it’s whether it’s helping media, whether that is even a free conversation or consultation, I’m always willing to provide my time, you know, based on my calendar availability, so
Lindsay Recknell 29:44
and I can definitely confirm that because here you are with me telling us all about toxic positivity. If there was one thing that you want a leader to take away from this conversation, what would it be,
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II 29:56
Remember who you are and I say that from a standpoint of, we all have needs. We all want to feel welcome. We all want to belong. You know, we all want to be environments where we can thrive, everybody. And I think if leaders remembered who they are, and they remember like, their story and the impacts they had when things are negative, how can you translate into learning from that, and creating better workplaces and and better environments for other people?
Lindsay Recknell 30:30
And that we have a really cool opportunity to model that behavior and to continue to grow as humans so that we can know how we can have that wisdom to support the people around us. Yeah, that’s beautiful. Thank you so so much for sharing your brilliance with us. Absolutely. We’ll link to all of those places that you mentioned in the show notes of this episode and on all the social medias as well, it has been a real pleasure to learn from you. I thanks so much for for being here with us. Thank you. Take care.
Lindsay Recknell 31:03
Thanks for joining me for another awesome episode of the Mental Health for Leaders podcast. To make sure you don’t miss any future episodes, please go to https://mentalhealthforleaders.com and subscribe to have these episodes delivered right to your inbox each week. You’ll also find all the show notes, links, and resources that my guests mention on the show and the link to the Guide to Influence & Impact at Work freebie I mentioned at the beginning of the show. You’re listening to this podcast because you know our people need us more than ever but being a people leader and HR professional is especially hard right now. If the thought of figuring out how best to support your people, and yourself, feels overwhelming and impossibly hard, let’s talk. I don’t promise I can make it easy but I can make it simple so let’s do that together. Go to https://mentalhealthforleaders.com and download the Guide to Influence & Impact at Work now. Until next time, take good care and as always, call me if you need me.
