Beyond Workplace Toxicity: Sue Mann on Transforming Culture

 

Toxic workplaces can take a toll on employees and organizations alike, but what drives these dynamics and how can they be changed? Adam Markel sits down with Sue Mann, an experienced workplace consultant, leadership coach, and author of On the Road to Jericho, to explore the human side of workplace culture. Sue shares insights on how toxic environments develop, the roles we play within them, and actionable strategies for creating healthier, more productive organizations. From discussing the impact of workplace bullying to rethinking the term “human resources,” this conversation offers valuable lessons for leaders, employees, and anyone navigating workplace challenges.

Show Notes:

• 13:48 – Roles in the Workplace
• 17:21 – Bystanders vs Upstanders
• 22:57 – Constructive Feedback: An Art and Skill
• 28:20 – Culture Shift Post-Pandemic
• 35:20 – The Future of Work
• 36:41 – Workplace Culture and Leadership

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Beyond Workplace Toxicity: Sue Mann on Transforming Culture

I’m so happy that you guys are here with me. I want to share a little bit about my guest and then get right into this great interview. Her name is Sue Mann. From being the only female head of a top-rated South African diplomatic mission in the Middle East and literally coming under fire through a 30-year career as a consultant organizational leader and advisor to the federal government, Sue compassionately speaks truth to power to support leaders in shifting from a destructive abrasive style to a constructive one.

Sue’s expertise in the area of management consulting and how it is that you create truly epic leadership cultures that embrace people, that nurture people as exposed to extracting everything from them and leaving them often empty as a result. This is really something I’m so passionate about myself and to find another leader, somebody who’s really made a difference in the world, sharing her philosophy and working at the core level directly with these leaders that often have styles of leadership that are not warm and fuzzy and don’t necessarily contribute something very positive to the organizational culture. This lady’s got quite a number of unique answers and perspectives and we’re going to dive into that right now. Sit back and enjoy my conversation with Sue Mann.

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Introduction To Sue Mann And Her Book

Sue, as you and I got this clear right before we started, it’s Sue and not Susan, even though baby and family or in the birth certificate perhaps it says Susan. Sue, I want to jump right into On the Road to Jericho, which is the title of your book. I want to know how that book relates to the workplace and to the workforce and what people are dealing with now. That is just a broad introduction, but I want to maybe let’s start with what the book is about and we can get into that, how it informs your view of the work world and even your work in the world, let’s say.

Thanks for that, Adam. Yeah, the opening scene of the book gets right to it. Somebody who is so devastated by a workplace experience that they don’t even know that they’re going to make at home and another person who feels completely righteous in what they’ve done. It’s an exploration of how these two people landed in that place. The stories, without turning one into a victim and the other into an evil bastard, treating them in all their complex humanity because that is who we’re dealing with in workplaces. Complex, messy human beings who have histories. I think so often we don’t see that in workplaces. We just see widgets, bodies, people who need to do tasks rather than this whole thing. That’s a huge part of the work that I do in the world.

Maybe this is not even a question that’s almost obvious on some level, but I do want to get your thoughts on why do you think people are seen the way they are seen in the workplace and have been for a long time. Any thoughts on that?

How long do we have? I think there are many reasons, Adam. I didn’t think there was a simple reason. I think it’s part of the way our workplaces are structured. It’s how we are socialized and cultured, the culture that we come into. It’s around what gets rewarded and what doesn’t, around profit and profit requirements. We call people resources. What do we do with resources? We mine them, we extract them to get the most value out of them, but human beings are not gold to be extracted from the earth.

On that note, there’s an absolutely beautiful quote from Andrew Carnegie that people developed the same way gold was mined. In the process, several tons of dirt might be excavated, but you don’t go in looking for the dirt. You go in looking for the gold. I think it starts there. What is work? What is it about how organizations are structured? Just the language we use that we land up seeing, there are so many comparisons between people and trying to compare them to computers streamline, optimize, get greater efficiency out of them. It’s like just in that language alone, we’re dehumanizing people just a little bit and we’re objectifying them just a little bit. That just starts the process.

I’m just going to jump in for a second here on that, so I don’t forget actually even though I’m writing notes as we’re speaking. Language is really important and I appreciate very much you pointing that out and human resources, has an interesting history around this I find intriguing. Before I get into the little history, what do you think of the term? You’ve already indicated that with respect to resources, we mine them and extract them. Is it an appropriate term in this day and age to call the group of folks that work human resources?

They’re people. They’re just people.

I guess this will be the dive into the history. People used to be called personnel at work. They were referred to as personnel. It was a personnel department. Some of us might even recall when that was the case. In the early ‘80s, it shifted from personnel or personnel department to human resources. I’m just curious about any thoughts. We didn’t prepare for this, so just getting your off-the-cuff opinion of it.

We evolve our language and we should.

I guess that’s my question. Is this an evolution? Evolution, to me, is about growth and the opposite is devolution or entropy or whatever you want to call it. Are we at a point where the term human resources might not be the best term to move forward? I suspect that when we moved from personnel or personnel department, it seemed very cold, and you know, it didn’t feel like it really embraced the people aspect. When we moved to human resources as a term, as a way to describe the function and the like, I think perhaps there were some folks thinking that that was warmer and fuzzier, that that was more inclusive, that that would be more empowering to workers.

Yet, I agree with you. I think that the terminology human resources implies that people are assets and things from which you can extract something. I’m asking your thoughts on this day in 2024, is it potentially time to pivot away from human resources as a term to describe our workforce and potentially be referring to that group differently?

I think we are already seeing it, Adam. There are many organizations that now refer to the people department or the chief people officer, the CPO, as opposed to the CHRO. There are many organizations that are already doing this. I think it’s starting to happen already.

I’m seeing those roles, the titles for roles change and embrace, like you say, CPO. I haven’t seen any departments that have been renamed from HR. HR is really well embedded in the culture.

It’s absolutely become the shorthand. I think we’re at a messy inflection changeover point. Some things are changing, some words stay and where will we be in the next twenty years? Who knows? That’s a good thing, I think. I think we are starting to see this happen because we’re seeing more and more like people are saying, “See me as the human being that I am.”

Let’s dive in. You have this book that is telling a story. It’s fictional, right? But based, heavily

It is based on lived experience. You could almost call it creative nonfiction.

I don’t want you to give away the book, but I certainly want people to want to engage, read, and learn, etc. What can you tell us about On the Road to Jericho as a metaphor, if that’s what it is? What can you tell us about these two tales of both person who’s been harmed and perhaps the person who’s perpetuated or perpetrated the harm? What can you tell us there as it relates to what you see in the workforce in your day-to-day experience as a consultant to organizations that are looking to improve their work experience?

The title comes from the ancient parable, which many people might know, that Jesus tells about the Samaritan who was robbed on the road to Jericho. I have literally walked that road. Parts of it still exist. It’s a Roman road. Back then, it was actually known as the way of the blood. It was that dangerous. That parable, for those who don’t know it, is a Samaritan who is one of the peoples of the Palestine Israel area of that time, who is robbed and is left beaten and dead on the side of the road. People walk by. Specifically, Jesus names a Levite who’s a type of Jewish priest and another type of Jewish priest. I need to correct myself. It’s not the Samaritan who’s robbed. It’s a regular Jewish person who is robbed and then a Levite walks by and doesn’t do anything.

Another Jewish priest walks by and doesn’t do anything. A Samaritan walks by and the Samaritans and the Israelites didn’t agree on anything at that point. There were pretty much mortal enemies at this point. They were two separate kingdoms. Samaria. They lived in Samaria, and Jewish people lived in Judea. It was the Samaritan who saw this man, broken, beaten on the side of the road even although he’s of a different faith. He picks him up, puts him on his donkey, takes him down to Jericho, gets him a room, gets him care, pays for all of that. The parable, how this all comes about, is when someone asks Jesus, “Who is your neighbor?” He tells the story and then he asks the question at the end, “Who is the neighbor?” The lawyer, who is the one who asked Jesus this question, reluctantly mumbles, “The Samaritan.”

The idea behind the parable is that a neighbor is anyone who sees and cares for another human being. What does that mean for my story or workplaces? It’s what we’ve just been talking about. I think so often, when we hear that parable, we wonder, would we be the Samaritan? It’s the original bystander story idea, the bystander effect, for those who know it. Who do we identify with? Are we the person who walks on by when we see someone hurting? Why do we intervene or why do we not intervene? The good reason why sometimes people don’t intervene is they’re afraid, too. As I said, this road was called the Way of the Blood. If I’m seen as intervening, am I putting myself at risk? Could I be robbed now? Are we the someone who helps? I think what we ask of ourselves a little less in any context of our lives, of when have we been the robber and when have we been the person who’s been robbed.

Roles We Play In Workplace Dynamics

The book is really a way of exploring how any of us can inhabit all four of those roles. We can be the victim, we can be the bystander, we can be the upstander, and we can be the robber. In any context in our lives, at work, at home, in our social lives, all of us have those capacities inside of us. Different situations and contexts will bring one out rather than the other. What are the consequences to us and to others when we are inhabiting any one of those roles?

In the workplace, what are you seeing that is either represented in that book? This is not part of our conversation just yet, but it’s part of what we discussed before we even started. That’s why I’m asking you. How does this book or what that journey is, and again, I don’t want to give away the entire book. I just want to understand how this relates to your work as a consultant advising organizations and leaders how to better take care of those in their midst?

I got into the work I do because I went through an experience of workplace bullying. In this context, we have the robber and we have the victim. It was an absolutely devastating experience. It almost seems too easy to cast them into these simplistic roles, but that’s what got me into coaching. I am now someone who coaches these abrasive leaders. It’s part of the work that I do. They are not evil bastards. Everyone likes to think that they are. Some of them are, but relatively few of them. What we see is that our workplaces, we talked about at the very beginning, they socialize us in certain ways and one of the ways they socialize us is into thinking that we need to be aggressive, assertive, dominant, task-focused, controlling in order to extract value from people. When I work with these people, what you really find is no one has shown them a better way.

They themselves are highly stressed-out human beings under huge pressures to demand and perform. They are taking their stress out on other human beings, hurtful, harmful, unhelpful, all of that. I’m not excusing the behavior, not in any way, but can we see that they, too, are struggling humans? When we see them also as struggling humans, then what do we bring them? What do we need to bring them to help them learn a better way to do things? Of course, we have all of those bystanders where we see these toxic dynamics at work. Do we say anything? Do we intervene? It’s very scary to do so.

We know our jobs could be on the line. We know it risks a backlash. We risk retaliation, especially when they are power dynamics. Yes, this very much plays out. How do we become the upstander? How do we move from being the bystander to the upstander? Recognizing how humanity, not telling people, “You just need to put your big girl pants on.”

From Bystanders To Upstanders: Making A Difference

What is upstander? That’s language that might be new for some people. Bystander, we’ve heard, but upstander, not so much.

The upstander is someone who sees something that is not good and chooses to say something, intervene, stand up for someone. In other words, they are putting themselves at risk in some way. It’s generally better in workplace dynamics if there’s not a sole upstander, if it’s a group, the way when there’s a power over dynamic, you need power with because going up against someone with power who is in a much more scarcity-based mindset of, “I need to control, I need to dominate,” that’s a suicide mission. There’s safety in numbers very much idea.

If you spend any time on LinkedIn, you see this out there. There is so much demonizing of the people who are engaged in these hurtful and harmful behaviors. I don’t find that helpful either because then we are just perpetuating that cycle that we talked about at the beginning. They are also human beings. I don’t want to gaslight anyone’s experience. I’ve been there. I know what it’s like. These are some of the most traumatic experiences people go through in their lives. I was literally just talking with someone about that. It’s destructive at the cellular level because you start to question every part of who you are. It messes with our psyche, these experiences at work when they’re truly that toxic. That is true, but I don’t find that we solve the problem by then just demonizing.

 

What are some of the solutions then to the problem? I think there’s bad behavior at work. That has not changed.

If anything, it’s escalating, Adam.

You think it’s escalating as well?

People are more and more stressed out.

Let’s look and talk about what solutions do look like, given the fact that let’s say everybody can have a reference point for bad behavior at work or someone that’s managing other people that maybe not doing a great job of mentoring and managing nurturing those people, caretaking those people rather they’re extracting from them or in the worst cases, bullying them, etc. What are some of the solutions that you typically give people access to? What does that look like?

The two levels of solutions. One is coaching and support for the individual. Leadership development, developmental coaching, whatever that might be. There are systems that will change company culture and the systems and processes because the two are always reinforcing each other. What happens is that if you have a healthy workplace environment where respect is the norm, required, incentivized, valued, recognized and uplifted, then when someone acts in a disrespectful way, it’s going to be nipped in the bud.

It’s going to be, “Yeah, no. We don’t do that here.” They might come in, they learn from previous workplaces what have you, and they learn, “Alright, don’t do it that way here.” When an organization doesn’t have those norms, then they reinforce each other. It’s like in some organizations, it’s the exact opposite. They are very dog eat dog organizational cultures and then that really brings that out. We don’t have a problem with the organizations that know how to manage for both performance and conduct. We have a problem where organizations are managing performance but not for conduct.

Constructive Feedback: An Art And A Skill

That’s really what organizations need to do here. If you want to cultivate a healthy organizational culture, then you do need to manage for both performance and conduct. That’s not something most of us are taught how to do. Certainly, in most of our performance management and evaluation systems, if you say your values of an organization are this, how are those values represented in your performance management system, in the kinds of goals you set, in the kind of leadership development training you provide or don’t provide? Are you equipping people to know how to give feedback in a way? To give constructive feedback well is a true skill.

It’s a true art. If you don’t have second thoughts about giving constructive feedback, then you probably don’t really know how to give constructive feedback because you know that if you need to tell somebody something that you know that might be hurtful, if you’re not having a sense of that, then yeah, your feedback is probably going to generate a reaction. I’ve needed to give constructive feedback. I remember one situation really well. It’s like I knew this feedback was going to be hard for someone to hear, so I didn’t expect them to take it well, but could I hold them with compassion and kindness. That’s the radical candor idea. I could hold them with compassion and kindness even as I had to say, “This was not okay.”

“It really wasn’t okay. How can I support you so that that doesn’t happen again? If that happens again, I’m going to need to say you can’t be part of this group because that compromised the entire safety of the group.” What happened after that was I followed that up with, “How are you doing? I knew it was going to take time to process through. How can I support you? Checking in with her. She went through all the cycles. I’m going in tangents here, but I think it comes back to you asking how do we change this? There’s the individual and the culture systems piece, where organizations need to take a really hard look at what they are truly incentivizing because you get more of what you measure, reward, and pay attention to.

I think you broke it down as I was listening and writing and thinking about it myself, that managing for performance and managing for conduct are two very different things. They reinforce one another. They support one another or they detract from one another. You mentioned feedback, of course. With our work, we often are delivering, developing content to help people to understand an experiential way how to actually provide feedback to other people because they’ve had very little practice doing it. I think, ultimately, it’s the difference between providing someone with your thoughts, these crucial conversations, if you will, where you’re being truthful with someone without being brutal. Truthful with compassion, your truth, but rooted coming from a place of love versus coming from a place of judgment.

I think that’s the distinction for me. Are the statements that you’re making is what you’re about to communicate to somebody rooted in some form of judgment about them? It’s like, “They’re lazy, they don’t keep their deadlines, their word means nothing, they’re soft,” whatever it might be that that is a judgment of them and their performance. Is it coming from a place that, again, using the word love here in the sense of, “I see the potential in this person. This person clearly can do really great work. There are there’s so many aspects of that person that are a great fit in our organization. If we could get that person to work in this area, focus in this area, develop themselves in this area, then they would be an exponential benefit to all those around them.” That’s a different place to start your conversation from.

Do you see the gold or do you see the dirt? Feedback coming from the place of you see the gold, let’s bring out more of the gold. It just lands so differently than feedback that comes from the place that’s only focused on the dirt and doesn’t see the gold at all. Just coming back to the book, I knew I’d hit on the right editor when her pithy way of saying with this was, “I don’t think you need to punch the baby in order to get it to grow up,” because our books, they feel like our babies. You’ve written a book, you know what it’s like, but they need work. We absolutely need our editors to give us constructive feedback. All the ways that we’ve not told the story or been coherent or clear or whatever it is. Do we go in, do we see the gold and do we help develop that gold? I think that’s a huge part of what makes feedback land or not land so well.

 

Post-Pandemic Workplace Culture Shifts

In working inside these organizations, as you have been embedded there, are there other things that you’re seeing as part of the culture? Here’s a direct question. Has the culture changed between what existed before the pandemic? With the pandemic being in our rear-view mirror, but people still really having been affected by it, still feeling the effects of it, but we’re on the other side of it, have you seen any change in organizational culture pre and post?

Yes and no. The good organizations got better and other organizations got worse. I think what I’ve seen is those who already had a glimmer around some of this stuff and culture, the importance of people, and creating environments where people feel that psychological safety. So many people think psychological safety doesn’t mean we have hard conversations. That’s not at all what psychological safety means. Psychological safety absolutely means we have the hard conversations, but we have them how we’ve been talking about, and they’ve paid more attention to it. Organizations that have always thought well might have had this feeling this is a bunch of touchy-feely woo-woo nonsense, it’s like, “Business fundamentals, baby. I don’t have time for any of this. This is just going soft.” The pandemic seemed to make them go, “Okay, I’ll grudgingly do this thing for now.”

The good organizations got better during the pandemic. The bad organizations got worse. Share on X

However, as soon as that started to scale back, they came back almost in some ways harder on, “This is what we need to pay attention to.” My answer to that is, it’s not one or the other. At the neurobiological level, when people are in a state of stress, they use some parts of their brains, not others. When we feel safe and social, we are using other parts of our brains much more of what we call our prefrontal cortex when we are in that safe and social state.

It turns out our prefrontal cortex, this is the home of our executive function, is where all our best thinking happens. It’s where our most innovative solution comes from. It’s where our ability to not just get tunnel vision and to think more holistically and brainstorm and come up with better ideas that literally, we come up with better ideas, better solutions to challenges when we are not in this, “I’m going to die,” state.

It is better for businesses. It shows up in the bottom line. There doesn’t need to be a tradeoff between it’s business results or it’s treating people like human beings. It’s like you treat people like human beings, they do better work, they do become more productive, more efficient, more creative because you haven’t whipped them into doing it. You don’t have the burnout. You don’t have the turnover. It really just makes business sense.

There doesn't need to be a trade-off between business results and treating people like human beings. Share on X

I think part of what I do is I sometimes help them make the business case. People want to make the moral case and I get it, that’s completely right. They’re not wrong, but it’s not enough. Businesses are businesses. You do need to respect that. Make the business case, show them the consequences of, and some businesses just see a certain amount of turnover as just part of the business.

Yes, that’s true to a certain extent, but it’s also not true in other cases. It’s like, do the work, do the numbers, do the math to surface what this is really costing. When businesses actually see the numbers on the insurance policies, on their number of sick days, on their number of medical leaves of absence, on revolving doors in certain departments, on turnover between different departments, then they start to see, “No, this just makes business sense now.” I don’t want to make the case of, “This is just the right thing to do.” It is the right thing to do, but it’s also the right business thing to do.

I think it’s very powerfully stated. Thank you for stating it just that way. For me, I think you just nailed it. It’s more than just making the moral case for treating people well or for wanting people to do well and thrive and all of that. There’s a business case, a numbers case and business is about numbers and we can’t ever lose sight of that. Not if you’re in business.

In business, there are no jobs to be had.

It almost goes without saying, but we have to state it. It’s obvious, but again, there is a contrast between making the moral case and the business case.

The moral case is the business case. I think that’s what I’m saying. People stop at making the moral case and then they get themselves all in a high dungeon about the fact that business leaders don’t care. It’s like, no, but you haven’t shown them why they should care. The moral case is the business case, but you actually need to state the business case.

Future Of Work: Predictions And Recommendations

My last question for you, just because I’ve loved where we’ve taken the conversation, I’m going to get a hold of your brand new book and others I’m sure will as well, On the Road to Jericho. I want to see how that story ends. Now I’m very curious. I would like to know if you had a crystal ball or maybe you do, to what degree are you seeing things in regard to the future of work that you’d like to share with us? Things to do with culture could be a recommendation, or it could be just something you see on the horizon that maybe some of us aren’t seeing or focusing on.

Where To Find Sue Mann’s Book

I am really seeing and celebrating and uplifting the people who keep on talking about these are human beings. I think the more we frame that, understand that, and acknowledge that, the more the other things come. Readers, if they want to find the book, I am publishing it in a non-traditional way. They will find it on Substack. Don’t look for it on Amazon or something. They just need to go to OnTheRoadToJericho.Substack.com and that’s where the book is.

Closing Thoughts On Workplace Culture And Leadership

Sue, I so appreciate your insights and your time. I loved where our conversation took us, and I’m excited to see the evolution that you described when you found that there’s no distinction between the moral case and the business case for taking better care of those folks. We like to refer to that as creating a got your back culture versus a CYA culture, which is a very different animal.

That’s the difference between bystander and upstander, that, “I got your back. I’m the upstander.” The CYA is like, “I’m going to protect myself first.”

The more we acknowledge that our employees are human beings, the more we can create a thriving workplace. Share on X

Thank you so much, Sue.

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I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Sue Mann. I thought it covered some interesting things, starting out with her book On the Road to Jericho and that particular example of how it is that we treat one another and then looking at that through a different lens and seeing where these things show up in the workplace. It’s obviously a very difficult job to manage performance and manage conduct. Often, that difficult task and sometimes an untenable task sits in the lap of the person that is in the human resources department, those HR professionals, as well as people that are in organizational development, training and development and anyone who’s a people leader who are constantly faced with these competing priorities.

What I loved about Sue’s descriptions of things and the language that she used and the way she described even the moral case and the business case for really taking better care and nurturing our talent in a better and more effective way, but taking care of them, having their backs as we like to call it, the, “Got your back,” environment and culture even versus the CYA culture that we’re all or many of us are familiar with.

We talked about how it is that we can better serve our communities, our workforce in general, by leaning into these principles, learning how to provide valuable feedback, and crucial conversations that come from a place of love versus a place of judgment as an example. If we can help people to understand not just in principle or on a philosophical level what that looks like, but actually give them practical, experiential moments to practice, giving and communicating feedback to other people in a way that builds them, that fills them, that doesn’t steal from or take something from them. Rather, it allows them to be filled up so that what overflows is valuable to them and valuable to all the people that are impacted by their work in the world.

I think we’re tracking something that’s better. We’re on an evolved path versus in a way just repeating the mistakes of the past. Great insight from Sue. I thank her for her time and her presence. I hope this was also enlightening in some way so that you can think about where it is that you are engaged in conversations about these types of subjects. I recommend that you check out more of Sue’s work in the world as well as this amazing book, On the Road to Jericho. I’m going to get myself a copy from Substack. Check that out.

For now, anyway, I just want to say thank you again for being part of this ever-expanding community, workwell, which sponsors the show, is growing in some really beautiful ways. We’re very happy to have that community continue to evolve its consciousness, and in many ways, that’s the result of you all providing your feedback to us. Please let us know what you thought of this episode. Please let us know if you have any questions for myself or for Sue. You can go to AdamMarkel.com/podcast to leave a direct comment question. Please, if you can provide a rating for the show on the platform that you consumed it, five stars is always great, but whatever feedback you provide is really appreciated. We just love the fact that you’re a part of what we’re up to. Thanks again and we’ll see you on the other side.

 

Important Links

• Sue Mann Website
• On the Road to Jericho
• LinkedIn – Sue Mann

 

About Sue Mann

From being the only female head of a top-rated South African diplomatic mission in the Middle East, and literally coming under fire, through a 30-year career as a consultant, organizational leader, and advisor to the federal government, Sue compassionately speaks truth to power to support leaders in shifting from a destructive, abrasive style to a constructive one.