The Only Real Cure for a Toxic Workplace

The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Bandit’s here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there’s a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you’ve got to see for yourself. That’s why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it’s about staying connected to my sports. I could follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news, and highlights all in one place. Tell of the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment. Welcome to the powerful introvert podcast. I’m Greg Weinger, and I’m delighted to have here today, Desiree Goldie. Welcome, Desiree. Oh, my God, so glad to be here. Greg, thank you for having me. Yeah, yeah, super excited. I’m really excited to get into this a little bit. We kind of have a shared mission we found out. I kind of came through this angle. I’ve been working on supporting people who are quieter, people who are introverts in becoming more comfortable and showing up in their workplaces and realizing that our workplace cultures are really not supportive of them. And that’s it. I mean, yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, and then, you know, as I started talking to more people, talking to more women and people of color, really realizing there’s a broader issue here with workplaces. Yeah, workplaces are tough right now. And I feel like it keeps getting worse. But I always, and you and I talked about this a little bit before is that leaders don’t know how to lean some of these people in the room, right? Even if you’re just talking, and I mean just talking, I shouldn’t even use that phrasing. If you’re talking about an introvert, if you’re me, Desiree, who’s type A, right? Sometimes we get in the room and we don’t know how to lead that person who may be a little bit quieter. And so the workplace, I feel, isn’t built for everybody. Right. And so as we start to think about how we cultivate these workplaces, we need to do a lot better than we’re doing right now. Right. So that’s kind of a tie-in to your consulting practice. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so that’s funny. You know, it’s funny, Greg, I always kind of lean in without knowing I’m leading in, but not going to lead in. Yeah. So I run a consulting company called Do Better Consulting. But the purpose and the mission of this company is to make sure that leaders feel comfortable leading, that they feel like they can lead a diverse team, inclusive team, and make people feel like they belong and want to work there. Right. We always talk about people should stay forever and they should do all these things. But, you know, some of the best moments I’ve had in my life is when I wanted to work for that leader. And I don’t think we’re cultivating that right now. I think we’re doing the opposite. I think we’re struggling to find places for people to feel like they belong. So it sounds like your practice is really focused on leaders and helping leaders establish better cultures for their employees. Absolutely. It’s about figuring out. And I used to work with organizations. And I found that it was really the individuals that need to work, right? They need it to spend time with me and say, Hey, I just don’t know what I’m doing. And sometimes as a middle manager, we don’t have training, right? If we get to the the sea suite, we’re obviously there. But if we’re in that middle ground, we’ve never been trained how to lead people, which is interesting because people view workplaces. Yeah. Right. So why are we training people to lead people? It’s a theme I keep seeing come up again and again, you know, in the past, you had these huge companies like Xerox or the AT&T. And they would really invest in their people and bring people along. You know, they’d be training from early management all the way through sea suite. And that’s just not out there right now. It is not. And you know, I was thinking about this conversation and going into it. And enterprise Renacar is actually one of the best places to figure out how to be a leader because they have a full like management program of how you get to be a leader. We don’t have that anywhere else, right? Where do we have that? You know, there used to be your right, the AT&T’s and like the big companies that actually had these full onboarding training programs and you started as a, let’s say a technician, you worked your way up through that process. Right now, we don’t have that because we’re not investing in humans anymore, right? And by the way, humans work at these places. And I think people are forgetting that right now. We’re looking at profits and numbers and all of those things, but we’re not looking at the human part of work. There’s a real thing that you have to do to sacrifice maybe 50 hours a week. I know I give my 80, right? So if you’re giving over that life, some of it should be investing you as well. That’s right. And if you’re giving that much, when do you have time to invest in yourself? Right. So if I’m going to give everything to you, you should give something back to me. That’s right. It’s like the trade off, right? Let’s shake hands and make an agreement. If you’re going to give me something back. Well, and so that’s tricky. So you’re coming at it from the angle of the leaders. And so you have to invest and not everyone is in the C suite. It has the power to make those changes. So absent that, how do you suggest people go about that? So, you know, I always talk about there’s power in just sitting in the space. There’s almost a power, the fact that you’ve got your director title, right? And so now you have it. So if my advice to people, and sometimes when we sit in the rooms, is to do some research about emotional intelligence, do some research, read a book. Right. I don’t think we’re, we’re so, we’re doing scrolling so much. I don’t think we’re reading and researching how to lead people anymore. And there’s some great books out there, right? And let’s say you’re working a 50 hour work week. If you gave yourself a half an hour each week that you maybe go to the gym, right? Because everybody blocks the gym time. We’re walking their dog. How about take a half an hour to research how to be a better leader? And I’m not saying that everything out there is going to be what you need to read. But we’ll give you kind of a perspective of how to lead. At least develop a mindset about what your leadership style is. Because I don’t, I don’t think most people even think about what their leadership style is. Right. I think that most people go into leadership and they just kind of do it. When I think about my leadership style, I actually had to take a moment and think about that. But what is it that I want to be as a leader at the end of the day? Would it want my people to feel for me? Right. How do I want them to show up every day? And we start asking ourselves those questions. We get to a better style of leadership. Right. Because I don’t think we’re asking questions. Yeah, I think that’s a really important point too is just recognizing the fact that there are different leadership styles. And that’s one of the important messages that I try to get to people who are quieter is that you don’t have to look like the type A stomping around the room kind of leader. There’s a lot of different ways that that can look. And you know what? I actually love being on this show because I believe some of the best leaders I’ve ever met are actually introverts. Right. So really cerebral about how they think about things. And sometimes they’re the most empathetic and authentic in the room. You get a tight bay. Sometimes me, you get me in the room and words is loud and going crazy. But if we took a moment to stop and think, you’re actually working from an introverted place. I always say I’m an extrovert introvert. I believe that my my life out here is me talking all the time. And then when I go to sleep at night or sit in my recliner, there’s a deserary that spends many, many hours reading books. Right. And I think if we took a little bit of time to invest in that, we would be better leaders to other people because there are so many leadership styles. Servant leadership, empathetic leadership, authentic, whatever you want to frame some of this stuff. You just need to pick a style. That’s right. Has to feel authentic. Right. It has to feel authentic to you. And mine is I care about people crazily, right? Right. Yours might be a little different as a people pleaser and an extrovert. That combination’s a little crazy. So, you know, we have to we have to think about how we we come to the table. I think there’s a place right now that people want to show up authentically. I think they do. Right. It’s a big trend right now. And but you have to figure out what that is. And that takes self awareness. Yeah. So, so that’s getting back to your practice. So you’re working with individual leaders. You’re maybe talking to them about what is your style and then encouraging them to develop some more self awareness because that’s that’s the key to understanding what’s your style and just what’s going around in the room with you. Yeah. And also great because most of the time when I meet these leaders, they’re not spending any time just even as self reflection. And I find it so many times that they come to me. They’re like, I don’t know. I thought you were going to tell me. Like, you know, we’re going to work on how you tell yourself what what the answer is. But because you don’t have that self awareness, because no one’s told you to have it. When they sit in it, sometimes I’ve actually had leaders cry with me. It is actually life changing if they just sit and sit with themselves for a minute. And sometimes it’s in silence just to figure out what the next step is for them. That’s great. So you can hold that space for them and, you know, let them do that inward looking. Yes. Sometimes I just think someone needs you to hold space. I’m glad to give it to them. And that is actually what I enjoy. Sometimes it’s seeing the revelation in that space. Right. So you’re kind of working one leader at a time and in that cultural transformation. I had two broad topics. So, you know, highest level that I wanted us to talk about. And, you know, that’s one is how do you promote cultural change? The other part is just advice for the people who are aspiring leaders. Because, you know, as we touched on, you know, it’s like we want to help shift the culture now. But it’s really it’s the next generation of leaders who are coming up. Yes. Who are going to have this bigger impact? Yes. You know, I believe in mentorship in a big way. I believe it is how you get to the next step of what real change can look like. And real transformation looks like. Because I do believe if you are sitting in the seat as a leader, you have almost the responsibility to be a mentor to others. And I also encourage that in my when we work together is I want you to think about how what you would say to the next step. What is that aspiring leader looking for? And what you didn’t know almost, right? And what would have helped you do a better job at what you’re doing right now? And so many come to me and can give me a full lit me of list, right? About how they could have gotten this and how they could have gotten that and how well we just had some of this, you know, bias training or how we had this or whatever. But I think that’s valuable. Again, this goes back to that reflection plays. But when we’re talking about aspiring leaders, I always say to people, I don’t know why you want to be a leader. Tell me why you want to be a leader. If you can answer that question in a really effective way, it changes my perspective about how we go into what the work or about to do. If you believe that you should be a leader because it gets you more money for compensation or all of those things, great. But there’s such a human element that you’re leaving out of it that you have to remember that compensation comes with a price. Yes. Yes. It comes with time. It comes with a big price. And so I say to them, think about why you really want this. Is it because it’s just money? Because I listen, I’m not saying it’s the wrong answer. I’m saying, think about all the things that come with that. Now you have more compensation. Now you have more pressure. How do you do self care? Are you doing it now? And how can we figure out a way to do it in the future? Right. And that’s so important because if you’re not taking care of yourself, there’s no way that you’re showing up for others. No way you’re supporting others. The way they need to. We can’t pour from an empty cup. I mean, I tell you, I worked with a lot of tech. And apart from why I think we felt really kind of a synergy here is I’ve worked with engineers who have gone from being a straight software developer to a manager of software developers. Or CIO or whatever they have moved on to our CTOs. And they struggle because they haven’t really sat in the seat with themselves. And they haven’t thought about how to take care of themselves. For me, every engineer I’ve ever worked with works way harder than me. Right. Yeah. They don’t think about how to do self care. And when I tell them they should be taking care of themselves, it’s like shocking to them. How will go take a walk? How about read a book? Make time for your partner and do all of those things because that changes how you are able to show up for your team. How you show up as a leader. How you do all of those things. If I could say one thing, if we, if no one else remembers anything else from this call, self care is my first. No, that’s really, really beautiful. And everything you’re saying really comes back to you to that and the human. Leaders have an outsized impact. They just do an on the whole organization. So it really goes for everyone on down. If people are taking care of themselves, then that creates the potential for change in creating better organizations. Absolutely. The organization should be encouraging that as well. We can’t just put it on the individual. Tell me if I have this right that you also work in in talent operations or sort of that that side of it. I can’t remember the talent space. So how do those organizations encourage us? Do you see a trend in this? Is our, you know, what’s happening in that space? Yeah, it’s so interesting right now. I think this is generationally happening. It’s very different. Right? I’m a gen X. They’re, you know, but I think the ones coming behind me, how they’re showing up is, they’re saying, no. To a lot of this stuff. Then in gen X, we kind of put up with right because it came from boomers. They worked for one company forever and, you know, did the whole thing. And then we kind of did the same thing, but we did it harder and faster. I feel like, especially in the United States. And then there’s those coming afterists that really are not putting up with it. And they’re saying, I need that space. I need that time. And this is why most of the people I work with aren’t even gen Xers. They’re from the other generations because they want to do better at what they’re doing. And I think we took an example from some of that as, circus would probably be in a better place. We’re not going to do it. I’m just saying if we did it, that was the right answer. Oh yeah. We’re going to work and kill ourselves until the day we died. But they bring a fresh perspective of what they’re not willing to put up with or willing to put up with. Yeah, they really have my, so my kids are, you know, 18 and 21. And, you know, they know all about my work and their generation just takes it for granted. Like, why would you put up with these things? You know, what, you know, and why do we? Yeah. Why aren’t we saying no? I do my best to fight the good fight, but I have a 30 year old and a 26 year old. And they’re doing the right things in the space to say we’re not going to put up with this. And they’re trying to change how organizations work. You know, I have a love affair with the 1950s. Believe it or not, as a black person, which seems really weird. But really that generation, they were given things from their organization like a pension. They were told to be loyal because it gave them something in genics. We, that doesn’t happen unless you work, I think, for the postal service or something, you’re not getting these big pensions. And who knows anymore? Right. And who knows today? Yeah. Right. Even even for that. You’re right. And even for that. And so people saved me all the time. Like, oh, job hopping people just keep leaving jobs every two years. Well, rightly so. Yeah. Why should they stay? Yeah. And that’s a tricky one. So in some ways, the advice to an individual is the company will only be so loyal to you. So you have to develop your own resources and your brand and just all these other things to support you as an individual because, you know, who knows if the company is going to be there, they’re not showing the loyalty to you. And we’ve certainly lost this, this past. I guess what advice do you have for, for people now in this situation? And this goes back to some of the worries, but I want people to be for themselves a little bit, right? Jump for you. Jump for your team, but also jump for you. It’s going to make you happy at the end of the day. What are your goals? What are your achievements? Because the organization at the end of the day may not stick with you. Keep that resume updated all the time. Always be on the hunt because you just never know. I think we all get contacted. Maybe not every baby. We get contacted about jobs, but they take that interview. See what it’s about. I happen to work for a really awesome company. So I’m not dabbed that. But I think that, you know, there is a place that there may be something better out there for you. If you’ve done the work to figure out what that means to you, is it culture? Is it time off? Is it, I don’t have to work 80 hours? What is that thing that you need? Then go into kind of having these kind of conversations with people, network with people, figure out maybe what your next step is. There’s a truly in companies out there. And someone will appreciate you for what you bring to the table and find out for yourself. Yeah. And for me, a big part of that are values. I just did a post on LinkedIn this morning. When you join a company, a few things can happen. The company can change and evolve and the values might be different. It may be that you were not as self-reflective in the beginning and then you realize, oh, well, actually I’ve shifted or my values are different. We’re no longer the same match or different leaders come in. So I think that’s a big part of it of feeling good about yourself is understanding what you value and care about and asking yourself, is this workplace something that is allowing me to be in a place where I can feel good about myself because of that? Right. And this is, you set it more eloquently than I can. You need to feel good about that relationship. And if it makes you feel good, great. Stay there. That’s awesome. But if it doesn’t, let’s think about why it’s not making you feel good. Let’s think about how you can maybe transition to something else. That is super important the time that we’re in right now. Yeah, there’s a lot of volatility. We really don’t know what the economy is going to do. And so it’s more important than ever to be paying attention to those things for yourself. Yeah. And I think we need to be as cognizant as we can about our own values in this space we call the workplace because it’s tough right now. And it feels kind of icky, right? And so if you feel that way, sit with yourself and think about what is the next step for you. Yeah, solid advice. Speaking of advice, back to our aspiring leaders, people maybe let’s start at the, someone in the individual contributor space interested in that. What would you suggest they be thinking about if they are interested in leadership? Yeah, I think I would think about what are the skills that I would need to kind of train up on. Right? There’s a little bit of this that feels like even interviewing maybe something. This interviewing is a skill set. Interviewing other people. Thinking about whether you really want to be responsible for profits and loss and and how that affects your daily life. And then I would also take time to think about what leadership actually means. What does that mean to you in your head? And what does that mean to your organization that you’re at right now? What are the responsibilities? What are the KPIs? What are all of those things? When I first got into leadership, I didn’t want to, I hate budgets. Right? It’s like a thing for me. I just sit with myself and say, okay, you’re going to have to carve out more time as a human because you know you hate this and you suck at it and all of those things. And so I knew that going in because I had had some real hard talks with myself. But if I wanted to do this, I knew I was going to have to do a budget. Everybody knows in this house. If it’s budget season, Desire cannot be talked to. You can’t talk to me. You have to leave me alone like kind of in a bubble. But then I had to learn that before I got into the leadership role. Because it was important for me to know those were my kind of flaws. And I know where my strengths are. The flaw I needed to work on. I’m still working on it. But the flaws I needed to work on. And this goes back to that self-aware, self-actualization. I can’t say enough that people get into leadership and just have no idea what they’re walking into. What you thought was going to be amazing sometimes just doesn’t feel right. And then you should also think about why it doesn’t feel right if you’re in the seat. Yeah, that really resonates with me. And kind of in my journey into senior leadership and reporting to a CEO. And that job was really different from what the image was in my mind. And it was super challenging to me in a number of ways. I didn’t have some of the emotional reserves and energy for some of the situations I found myself in. So I had to go and do work to build up some of that. The CEO did the work that’s super important. You had to build up that. And I don’t think we all are going to have it. We just have to build up that reservoir of skills. Yeah, each stage I think entails that. I mean, no one is more knowing all these things. And we may not see that. But that’s the result of a lot of lifetime of effort to develop all these different capacities. I think you’ve always heard of this. But my mom always says to me, please stop trying to be the smartest person in the room. No, never heard of that. See, it always says to me because that’s the truth. If I am a student forever, then that makes me the best person and best version for my team, for me, forever because if I choose not to think I know everything, if I’m always reading and learning and understanding that I flaws, then that gets me to a better place as a leader. And the chaos that leadership brings, you got it. You got to know you’re not the smartest person in the room. Yeah, yeah, you got to learn that. Really quickly. We’re clear. Or that, you know, not every answer is in a book. You know, that was kind of mine. I started out high academic achiever. And so a lot of these things, I thought, you know, you can think your way through it. Or you can learn your way through it. And books and don’t get me wrong, books and podcasts are still part of my diet. But the more chaotic these situations get, you more realize you can’t lean on those things. You have to tap these other reserves and develop these other capacities. And so with that as human interaction, the first time I ever did a performance review, it was really shockingly bad. Because I wasn’t able to coach that person up to what I needed them to be, because it wasn’t a great reveal. And so for me, that it was a learning experience. And I was like, oh, you’re not good at that. I don’t need to read a book to know I wasn’t good at that. But I do need to work behind how I tap the next one. And it’s changed my, that changed my whole perspective of how I gave my performance review. And I actually got really bad feedback. It’s one of the few times in my life that I’m not talking about myself, but I am. Then I’ve gotten really bad feedback as a leader was the performance review was so bad. And I had to figure out why I couldn’t coach that person to the next level. And then it upleaving the organization. It was, it was tough for me. In my head, I was trying to save them. What I ended up doing was actually making them leave. Those are lessons that you can’t learn out of a book. I agree with you. You’re not going to learn it from a podcast. You’re not going to learn. You have to have that actual human experience to figure out that maybe something’s just not right. We learned so much from our failures. Or we can learn so much from our failures. Not everyone does. You actually listen to your failures. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve definitely been guilty of not listening to some of my failures. But I try to do better. I always say to my, the people I work with, as long as you’re trying to put one step forward, for me, that is everything. It doesn’t need to be these gargantuan moments of time where you’re like, oh, I solved world hunger. It needs to be like the one step forward every moment of every day. And as long as you’re working on you, for me, that’s everything. Awesome. So I may put you on the spot a little bit. You were talking about books. Are there some standout things that might be good for leaders of any level, or potentially for aspiring leaders? Yeah. So for me, I, you know what? I think that books are super personal. So I’m not going to call out any of these minds have to do with very much about being a black woman in leadership. So mine are super heavy, like the memo, or I’m not yelling. And so those feel personal to me and I needed to read them. But I think it’s about what time you’re at, what moment in time you’re at as a leader. You know, we could all read the older books like, you know, the seven secrets of something, whatever they are, right? You know, you could read those books if you’re an engineering. It’s going to be very different. If you’re in sales, it’s going to be feel more personal to read something more interactive about how you lead salespeople. So I’m not, I don’t want to give you titles, but I do want to say, like find whatever book or podcast or social handle or whatever speaks to you at the time you’re in. And that time will change, right? Well, the books I’ve read 20 years ago, not the books I’m reading now, right? So you have to think about what time you’re in, what you need to hear from that book or podcast. And really curate some authors. And this goes back to the networking thing, right? I think that if you start to think about authors and networking and, you know, you can follow an author on Amazon for goodness sake, right? If you think about how you curate your network of information, you start to get that fuel from other things that you need. And so for me, you know, I read a lot. My mom is a super big proponent of reading and how we grew up. And I feel very personal about books. And I feel like invested in them when I, when I’m when I get in them. So I don’t want to get away from somebody. So, but I do want to say, like if anybody needs any recommendations, please reach out and glad to share my library of nonsense. Oh, yeah, I, that’s really wonderful advice. I almost feel awkward when someone gives me a book or I have a commendation is like it is like a, a very personal choice. And I’ve kind of guided from within almost, you know, there’s sort of an intuition and that it’s at play knowing that I should read this at this time. Right. And that’s from these, these cues. So I love that. Yeah, I love that. I love that it, it should feel personal though, for the time you’re at right now. And I don’t think anyone, including myself, can tell you how to do that journey. I can help guide you. But I can’t tell you what is going to feel that connection for you. And then so big part of that is developing that self-awareness and that self-education. And then the other part is taking care of yourself. And so any, any general advice on how to go about that? Yeah, I tell people all the time right now because I work a lot. I tell people I’m just going to get some sun. Go outside. I think we’re tied to these computers, tied to our phones. I actually working with somebody right now and I said to her, I want you to sit without the phone for just an hour. You can do it. I make her like put it in a safe right now. Basically, she can’t have access to it. Because you need to have some kind of interaction that is not digital. The world is like beautiful and promising and all of those things. So get out there, see some sunshine, get away from your phone, get away from your computer. It also clears your mind and helps you focus. So that would be my big advice. Please get away from these digital things that we’re doing right now. Absolutely. So, Desiree, if people want to find out more about you and your work, where can they go to find out? Oh my gosh. Well, I live on LinkedIn. So please see me at Desiree Goldie on LinkedIn. But also my website of my company is dobetterconsulting.net. I also am the marketing director of marketing for a company called ZRG. Please look us up as well at ZRGpartners.com. And then I’m launching a podcast this summer. So, exciting. It’s going to be called Talentless. And so please look well. Fantastic. Well, it’s been a real pleasure to talk to you about these topics. I think they’re really vital. And we’re at this kind of important moment in the culture where people really need to be taking care of themselves and building that resilience and self-awareness. So, that’s really valuable thoughts and advice. Thank you so much. This was fun. You know, I can talk about this stuff all day, Greg. It was great. Yeah, me too. Yeah, got to get back to our busy jobs. Yeah. Got to get back to real life. Yes. Thank you so much for clapping me though. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Protein is everywhere, but the real upgrade is fiber-maxing. 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