Re-focus to escape

Discussing with a friend, a DV survivor, this morning what would I say if I met someone else in that situation, and she asked what happened that I made a move to get out of there.

I think what helped me move out is when I focused on something else - somewhere to get to.

So going through the logic:

Slowly over time the situation has become more and more toxic - in fact it's really bad so that all those who care about me are telling me to get out.

As it's happened so slowly I can't see its so bad. I don't believe them as they are outside and they can't see the things I hope in, that the people are mostly ok and have good and bad sides, that there are chunks of hope.

My view of myself has eroded over time. I no longer believe I have any value. I believe I am useless and unemployable. The pieces of hope I have are that I might be lucky to get a break in this place but that is the only hope that is realistic for me. I believe what they say of me and how they view me and how they treat me.

Management don't know any better. It's been like this for a long time, everyone here the same. So they can't see how bad it is or what could be better. I am getting my reference point from them and this feeds into my perception of myself and my work.

 I know I'm unhappy. And I pick at it. And really that doesn't get me anywhere.
Even as I read up and analyse it and here is where I am grateful for feminism concepts to untangle events for which I do not have words or concepts or a framework to process what is going on. I had kept away from all that stuff years ago, equating anything about gender a cause of problems. Determined that if I ignored gender, that anyone else who dealt with me would ignore it also. If it had no value to me, then I should be perceived as person first gender next by others. And that is sort of true. Excepting that my differences by whatever means, gender being part of those, seemed to be the problem. The emphasis on inclusiveness makes so much sense to me.

So what to do with this happiness? This round and around in my head of I am useless so I can't do anything so I'm stuck here and lucky to have a job.  So helpless. Just stuck. Around and around.

So I was frustrated with myself as much as those people around me who I heard saying the same things. Complaining to one another does not improve matters.

So I started with the question "What do I want?" I can't whinge about something and just stay there - I need to take action or else quit complaining. It was clear that despite much effort things were not going to change there as I had tried. And I can't just want something impossible, like 'that it's not like this' - it needs to be something tangible. So I started looking outwards. What could I do, what could I aim for.

So the focus stopped being on myself, and this internal I'm useless short-circuit, to looking outside to what I would like to do, I could see there were opportunities out there, and work out the steps to take and have the courage to take them.

As I chatted with my other friend who had been in a situation like this, you just don't know that you're in that situation and how bad it is. You won't believe people who tell you to get out.

Perhaps the trick to help those people is to show them what else is out there, what other workplaces are like, and encourage them to look inside, not at what they are, but what they would like. What you would like is independent of how good or bad you are at it. Capture people's imaginations, help them get in touch with the interests and likes inside of them, show them opportunities.

How to not believe people. And the power of knowing what you want.

If you trust people, and trust is a good thing, you can get things done more quickly.

In a toxic environment, if you are someone who offers trust, then you believe it when management says that they will do this, or will do that. You believe the best of people and that things will change in such and such a circumstance. Particularly when they themselves might believe what they are telling you.

Maybe I need to do regular reality checks of the situation around me. That toxic situation went on way too long. It's not like I'm not capable of assessing if someone is actually going to do something - regardless or not if they are capable of doing something. My EQ is not that bad even if you have to wonder if I put up with that for so long

And reality checks of myself. If I can not change into what they want me to be in order for the overall circumstances to change, well then I only have myself to blame if I stay there.

I guess I am wondering what could I say to young women coming into the STEM industry how to recognise and remove themselves from a toxic place - how to see that no matter how interesting the work is, how cool a lot of the people are, how great the overall company may be, how to recognise and just leave.

I think part of it is the question I ended up regularly asking myself "what do I want?". It got tiring with this nebulous whinge of I'm unhappy. I am about solutions so solve it. Sometimes the definition of a solution requires a direction first to identify the problem. And it's just so negative dwelling on problems all the time. Particularly when problems are just so obvious - and not soluble anyway. Having a specific direction, knowing what I wanted, is a lot more tangible. It just makes more sense, is a better use of energies, to navigate around rather than through.

Knowing what I wanted, and part of that is obviously not to work in a toxic place, really helped me navigate out of there. I took steps towards what I wanted to do, and now am on my way to how I want to work with the tech I love.

BWS

A few months back I caught up with someone who had been working in the construction industry. Who at the time, me included, we had all been urging to leave her toxic workplace as they were constantly stuffing her around and treating her badly. So odd that people at the same time were also urging me to leave. For both of us for many years. And neither of us could see it for ourselves.We stayed because we believed we could make it better, that it would get better, that there was better there, that the people were better (sometimes) and the work was...ok? Anyway she had left a couple of years back, been promoted 6 times and now is managing 30 people. She now saw me after 6 months out of that toxic place, and seeing how much more relaxed I am, she says we are the ones who understand why we stayed there, despite everyone telling us to leave. And I do. I get it.

Why did we stay in those toxic places?

We looked for hope? We saw solutions if we could just get them implemented. We could do things. We could fix things. All our training, knowledge, skill, we knew how. And the people, at least individually are all ok. Mostly. Maybe one or two exceptions. And the work is interesting and worthy.

But the culture is toxic.

Maybe it was us. I know for me it was a case of there is no way I could get a better job elsewhere. I was lucky to have this one and the pay is reasonable.

So anyway, we're both out. By our own choices and actions.

And we do understand why we stayed.

In fact her partner said as we were discussing it, "battered wife syndrome". I looked at him in some surprise, and went home and looked it up. It's no longer a syndrome, but I see what he means in the rough descriptions.

Makes me look twice now at the domestic violence stories.

And other stories of bullying and marginalisation. Most recently of assistant ministers in the Anglican church. Someone asked the question, "well why do they stay?" as if it was obvious that anyone who was above this all, pure of motive or whatever would have the common sense to leave.

But I get it now. I don't think there is any way I could have understood until I was out of it. I had years and years and years of friends and family telling me to leave. And considering I still haven't left the company as a whole just the toxic section, I still anticipate a certain level of cheers when I finally say I'm gone.

Someone posted an article on the 'work finding social media platform' re my company re leadership approach to culture. Wow. It was messaged to me and I privately asked someone who I know in HR about it. She also was surprised and told me to keep my digital signature clean as they would be scouring everywhere. Both the article and her response to tell me to protect myself from fallout make me feel just sick again. That, and what I've seen towards the end of the year of ... other things.

I've taken a large amount of leave at the end of this year to think about things. I was in that toxic section for a long, long time. It is not unreasonable to need a little more time to work through things to let them go and build to where and who I want to be.

When you can't even produce a sigh

So the new director visited today.

He was late. Like 30 mins. And due to recent costing exercises where I have all the OPEX costs in my head I could actually cost this. And then he spoke for 40 mins. And then we had morning tea over which we were permitted to continue to listen to him. I watched a person who I admire greatly contribute to one of his points and watched his slight impatience.

He started with what seemed to be establishing his credentials of things he had achieved. But very little talk about team work or building others up.

He gave two specific examples of staff. A GM who left when he became director. And a woman who he had been recently talking to who had formally been one of his staff. As there are not that many women out there it wouldn't be hard to work out who.

The thing that has got me just so disheartened is his repeated statement about if anyone was unhappy they could leave. Saying that if staff are unhappy they could leave is a statement about culture. It's saying I don't want to know any problems, don't tell me just solve them and I'm not interested in helping. Here are my KPIs and get behind them or go away.

There is no group effort here.

I've never been so glad to be 4 levels down and beneath notice before.

Authenticity, engagement and standard setting

The CEO has made a post which is being read by a lot of people as permission to vent.

Lower level people that is.

Upper level people are all 'rah rah yes yes'.

And I suspect middle level people are going to be very silent as they need to do both.  (Although I have noticed a lot of likes...)

To me, it's made me look at the question of enablement again. We have system after system that gets put in place collecting staff ideas and getting very enthusiastic and then nothing happens. And every single system I've seen has this same breaking point : you begin to submit... and you get to this point in the submission process where basically they expect you to do everything, you the submitter.

They expect you to understand the scope of the problem and your solution

They expect you to be able to cost it (get real???)

They expect you to have all the details of the solution.

They even expect you to proof of concept it.

It's this constant push back on the submitter. It's like they don't really want to hear. It's like they really don't want to do anything.

It's like a wall.

Seriously the last time I submitted something if I hadn't had my secondment experience over the previous 3 months I would have had no ability to participate. The process itself has demonstrated this massive disconnect between senior leadership's understanding of staff enablement. We have all these staff who really want to do something but can't do it. And then the upper levels go 'yes we care, tell us your woes' and the cycle starts again. Again and again and again.

Anyway, I posted. I can back up everything I posted.

And it's an interesting problem to think through how, if I were upper levels, would I break this amazingly stupid cycle.

Team ratings while thinking about trust

My one on one with my new manager yesterday. He's now acting as GM too so it's a wonder he has the time. So I think we all save up a lot of work stuff to ask/tell him as he's too busy to barely breathe the rest of the time. But wow, best manager so far, he does not cancel them. That's a real testament to wanting a good staff culture. I can almost count on one hand for each of my previous managers how many 1 on 1s I had with them. They very little seemed to value the time. This big corporate and they go on about 1 on 1s every so often and I don't understand why they can't see that they just don't happen.

But anyway he brings up end of year ratings. And immediately my stress levels go up - I've realised that they were a way that previous managers have justified their treatment of me. If they gave me a reasonable rating then they would have to explain the missed opportunities, lack of responsibilities and just generally the way they talked to/of me. I remember at one point they used to ask us to sign our ratings after they gave them to us. I refused due to how wrong I thought my rating was one year. I don't remember having to sign anything years after that. The one decent manager I had during my years working in that toxic place (besides the manager I got when I was seconded out of there - oh how I wish I had had him years earlier) wanted to give me a middle rating and the manager above him (definitely part of the old guard toxic crowd) made him rate it down. By then I was able to reassure him it was fine as I didn't care - he cared though and I never really got why but possibly because he could see it was unfair too.

But my new manager brings it up and I point out how counter this is to team building as it is one rating against another. And how I don't care as it does not affect my remuneration - all I care about is his review of me as that is what I will take if I was to leave. He's knows all this but at the end of the day he's got to give me a number - that is a problem that this corporate forces on him.

And this seems to run counter to various values they seem to have around working together, etc. It's one of the nails ultimately that pits one person against another, and one team against another.

Seriously, I just don't get it. This is what seems to hurt the most. The large disconnect between corporate values and how they are acted out when it gets down to the lowest levels.

I guess I'm being idealistic. A lot of other companies out there have the same thing. Maybe I just need a holiday. Maybe I need to leave and see what else is out there and what their cultures are like.

Trust

So many differences in the whole approach to work now. In my old section I had set ways of doing work and it had to be 100% correct. In this new area, there is this rough concept of a goal for which we develop an understanding based on business need and business strategy, folded through with the various values we have around customers and with legal and regulatory needs. And 100%? Nice goal there. Let's try 50% if that on the first pass. I'm almost fell off my chair when my senior colleague told me this. About an hour later on the phone my friend who is similarly senior but working in a different industry at the same type of job told me the same and emphasises regularly it will never be 100%.

And this goes straight into the heart of my fears from what happened before and how I learnt how to deal.

Because when you're being bullied/discriminated/  - and I've learnt a new term here - mobbed, one of the ways they get at you is when you make mistakes, when you're not 100%.

I have to send work out that I know is less than 50%. And that goes straight into the heart of my fears. And I have to send it out like that asking for feedback. Be willing and ready for challenge and change.

There is zero room for defensiveness here. All those old rules and protections I've built because I had to before do not work here. If anyone challenges me like that - and they do as there are gossips who pick at people and snipe behind people's backs  - I just have to shrug and focus on the work.

But for the most part they're not like that. And that's another big thing I have to adjust to. As it's not such an overall toxic workplace, the the other areas I deal with are not so toxic, they don't behave in ways (mostly) where I actually have need to throw up my defences. There is a softness there. A willingness for suggestions. A willingness to work together and accept feedback and direction where needed. Everyone who approaches anyone starts with a kind of humility at least while everyone works out who is what where (it's a huge company so this is almost a constant thing to work out for all of us as people swap in and out and are moved around). 

And it all in the end comes back to trust. 

Each year or so I work on a word. Something to think about, something to theme, something that I want to understand in life. This year I was thinking I need to understand relationships better and was going to have the word 'community' but something made me change it just as I was sticking it up there to remind me to 'trust' instead. And... I'm glad I did. I mean practically what does trust mean? It's one of those words that I go, sure I know what it means... but then you think about it a bit more and everything is expressed in a kind of experiential way. So the dictionary definition "firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something." But these days the concept of truth is challenged everywhere. So no wonder I wonder about the concept of trust.

And it affects everything.