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Big Business Insights: Leadership: How to balance authority and empathy
Leadership and psychological safety in the workplace have garnered much attention in recent years. Workplaces are shifting and the way that people engage at work and the expectations they have are changing, too. There is a call for healthier leadership and for leaders who foster psychological safety.
In this episode of the Old Mutual Corporate Big Business Insights podcast, host Blessing Utete, Managing Executive at Old Mutual Corporate Consultants, leads a discussion focussed on leadership’s role in fostering a psychologically safe workplace and addressing workplace bullying. Dr Ngao Motsei, an independent leadership consultant, outlines the legal framework and importance of psychological safety, while Thelma Janse van Rensburg, an empathic leader in high-growth tech, shares insights into authentic leadership and its impact on employee engagement. The conversation highlights the need for respectful treatment of employees, the complexities of workplace bullying, and the benefits of a psychologically safe environment for productivity and talent retention.
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Old Mutual Corporate Big Business Insights Podcast Ep.1 Leadership: How to balance authority and empathy.
Blessing Utete: The industrial revolution was a major turning point in history. The more widespread use of machines in farming and factory processes brought about economic growth, but also harsh and inhumane working conditions. Social reform movements across Great Britain and the USA placed pressure on employers to look after their staff better, leading them to appoint industrial welfare workers.
This job was the forerunner to what we know today as human resources. We may have moved on from those times, but the modern working world still has its fair share of challenges. As many as a quarter of South African employees will be diagnosed with depression during the course of their work lives, and absenteeism on account of depression costs our economy R19 billion annually.
BBC YouTube Clip: I found myself dreading going into work, as soon as I saw the door, it was like this weight just went on to me. Insiders eating you up. I'm all sweating all the time, quite hurt. It's taken somewhere in the region of six years to be able to really regain my confidence and get myself back to my former self. You lose part of your own identity when you go through this.
Blessing Utete: What you've just heard are voices of real people who've actually been bullied at work. In today's episode, we ask what role does leadership play in stopping this from happening? How do leaders of today create a workplace that prioritises emotional and mental well being?
Welcome to the Big Business Insights podcast brought to you by Old Mutual. I'm your host, Blessing Utete, the Managing Executive at Old Mutual Corporate Consultants. By meeting thought leaders and visionaries across sectors, looking at the past, the present, and the future, we aim to give business leaders the 360 degree advantage.
Our guest today will help me find out more about how a leader can show strength without being a bully, build trust and make their employees feel psychologically safe at work. Dr. Ngao Motsei is an independent leadership consultant, workplace bullying expert and adjunct faculty member at the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
Dr. Motsei has also written a book, Building Psychologically Safe Spaces, Safeguarding Your Workplace Against Bullying. Welcome Ngao.
Ngao Motsei: Thank you very much. Nice to meet you.
Blessing Utete: Thelma Janssen van Rensburg is an empathic leader with experience in high growth technology organisations. She's worked at a number of big startups and understands the complexities of growth and leadership from some hard earned personal experience. Thank you for joining us, Thelma.
Thelma Janse Van Rensburg: Thank you so much, Blessing. It's a pleasure to be here.
Blessing Utete: Great. Now to get into the conversation, I think, you know, really with the expertise and experience that both of you have, I'm sure you have many insights to share with us about leaders on both sides of the spectrum.
And so maybe just to start off, Ngao, can you tell our listeners what the term psychological safety in the workplace actually means?
Ngao Motsei: In its simplest form, psychological safety at work refers to an environment where employees feel comfortable to speak up, come up with ideas, share their opinions, including reporting mistakes.
That is the gist of what psychological safety is, but at the centre of it also is an environment where employees feel respected and valued for their contribution. That is what psychological safety is.
Blessing Utete: Thanks Ngao, but I suppose then there's there's some confusion when it comes to these grey areas of the relationships and power dynamics that can exist.
And so it also is just helpful for us to understand what then constitutes bullying in the workplace?
Ngao Motsei: Bullying in the past, as the youngsters say, it's, it's complicated, but these days it's no longer as complicated, and why do I say that? Because for the first time in South Africa, we have a legal framework that clearly defines what workplace bullying is.
And that is found in the code of good practice for the prevention and elimination of harassment. Yes, granted, it places bullying within the context of harassment but what it does do is it defines it as actually like this. This definition, the code defines bullying as unwanted behaviour that impairs dignity.
I mean, how clear can that be? Perhaps the other thing, specific examples, some of the things that we don't even think about, which is where the complexity of bullying is, because it can be nuanced. Some of the behaviours, for example, are gossiping, something as gossiping and spreading malicious rumours about somebody that can actually destroy the professional brand.
Other behaviours are demeaning, consistently demeaning and publicly humiliating people and I mean, there's a, these are examples of some of the more overt behaviours that constitute bullying others that are covert, which are very difficult sometimes to detect, is, for example, being marginalised, not being provided with information that is through your require in order to perform again.
I'm hoping gives you some kind of a flavour of what really constitutes behaviour that's considered to be bullying.
Blessing Utete: Yeah. Thanks. Now that actually does give quite a nice, simple explanation. I like the way you actually broke it down quite nicely there. Going over to Thelma, let's go to the other side of this conversation, which is, you know, just maybe, could you tell us what, what are the, you know, the best characteristics of the great leaders that you've seen?
Thelma Janse Van Rensburg: That's such a great question, and recently, and when I say recently, it's maybe over the past four or five years, there's been a big move to authentic leadership, right? Like people want to join an organisation where. There's transparency and clarity in terms of who am I following in this organisation? Now, if I think what that means to me, there's this need for consistency in your approach to leadership, right?
And I was really thinking about this because authenticity is one thing, right? But how do you guide that leader in their authenticism, right? To display the right behaviours, because I mean, we want everyone to show up to work, to be able to be themselves fully, to reach their potential, but we can't always control what that person brings into the workplace, right?
So you need to set those boundaries and those principles clearly for everyone to be able to follow it and I think the best leaders that I've seen were the ones who were very clear in the expectations, they said when it comes to the behaviours they expected, and then they were consistent themselves in following what those behaviours or what those expectations are and being clear and communicating all the way from the top to the bottom, like this is who we are as an organisation, and this is what we expect from you of each person in their role and then there's the nuances. But you know, when you have people who really care about individuals, right? They care about them as a person, as a professional, as someone with potential that they can achieve While at that specific organisation, that point in time, and those things are more nuanced than I think are more difficult to develop or train, because some of those things are just, you know, who those people are, how they were raised, so many things that they bring into the workplace.
Blessing Utete: No, definitely there's, there's quite a bit there and I think I suppose when you talk about authentic and sort of caring leaders, then one wants to almost just explore if you don't have those elements, what kind of workplace and culture does bullying then, then bring and how does that impact productivity?
Thelma Janse Van Rensburg: I think of what Dr. Ngao shared, like how debilitating it is. Right? Like whether it's COVID or like seeing people not be able to actually focus on what's expected of them because they have this fog, right? Like over them, whether it's a person, whether it's the way they feel that they're being treated by the group, whatever the cause may be, it's really hard to see and hard to help someone get out of.
Blessing Utete: Thanks for that, Thelma. And, and Ngao, you wanted to come in on this one as well.
Ngao Motsei: No, I just, I just wanted to say that nobody can bring their best selves if they are not treated well, because the impact of toxicity of abrasive leadership styles, the impact it has on people is it diminished their selves, their sense of belief and when your sense of belief is diminished, how do you bring in your whole self and do the best that you can?
So ultimately toxic environments impact the productivity of the organisation or the team or the specific business unit where it's happening.
Blessing Utete: Tell us more about, you know, the benefits then of employees feeling happier at work and being psychologically safe.
Ngao Motsei: When you feel valued and respected, you bring more of yourself, you go over and beyond what is expected of you.
The other benefits, um, increase employee engagement and when you have increased employee engagement, you also, the, the benefit of it is through how people work together. For example, there's more collaboration and everybody else understands that whatever I do contributes to the bigger goal, the bigger goal of the team or the bigger goal off the organisation.
And then, of course, the most important because everybody today, every business talks about being customer centric. So when you have happy employees, it translates to customer satisfaction. It translates to how employees also treat and engage and go also the extra mile in making sure that they meet their customers or the client's needs.
And research has actually demonstrated and shown the correlation between employee engagement, happier employees and overall productivity.
Blessing Utete: Very important I think, you know, if you think, just think through how this impacts right to the bottom line of businesses. I mean, it's
huge. Thelma, you want to come into that one as well in terms of any additional benefi ts that you want to highlight?
Thelma Janse Van Rensburg: Thanks, Blessing. Yes, if I can support what Dr Ngao just shared, it's very interesting to see when people feel psychologically safe, how they speak up, how they point out. When the business is going in the wrong direction. So you could have someone who's in a different team, but who's had a discussion with the customer about something specific about the product or whatever the case may be.
And they have that feedback. Now, if they don't feel psychologically safe, there's no way they're going to speak up. There's no way they're going to share with a superior that they actually think they're going down the wrong path, but when they do feel psychologically safe, and I've seen this, they would raise it.
They would say like, don't make this higher or don't do this. Don't introduce this new frictional step into the customer experience and then leaders take it seriously, they listen and they act on it and it directly impacts your bottom line. And that's really the benefi t of building a workplace where you, you've hired the talent, you've brought them in. Why wouldn't you give them an opportunity to do what you hired them to do?
Blessing Utete: Maybe if you just think about our South African context, are there issues that are specific to our own context that you have seen or that you've experienced? Maybe we can start with you, Thelma, and then we can go to Ngao.
Thelma Janse Van Rensburg: Yeah, I think South Africa, and then maybe also this is more specific to the tech industry and I think this is where most of my experience is, right, is I was thinking earlier when I thought about the topic and I thought about the type of situations I've been in where I supported someone through an experience like this, right, like where they were exposed to someone who had I'm this type of behaviour, and it was really causing them to reconsider their career, reconsider the current job like they needed support and advice, and I really struggled to think of any male examples because it was most of the time it was women bullying women, right?
And it would often be a female leader bullying a more junior person in the same, you know, fi eld, whatever the case may be and that's such an interesting dynamic for me. And I'd love to pick Dr. Ngao's mind on like, what is that? What is that? What does that say about, you know, gender dynamics in South Africa, in, in the tech industry, about not letting people succeed or not setting them up for success, right?
Is there something there and how do you manage those dynamics? Right. And of course, I think the context in which you find yourself, the country, the jurisdiction, all of those things impact how people behave towards each other in the workplace. And those are things that people, professionals need to be aware of because they need to build out frameworks that take those things into consideration, right? When we build out solutions or supporting mechanisms.
Blessing Utete: Very interesting perspective there. I mean, if I think about just our society and, and, you know, you know, we know we're a society that's got high levels of gender based violence, but you're talking more about female and female. I would have expected more sort of male on male and female issues in terms of workplace bullying, but would like to hear Ngao also just give us some of the insights and maybe answer some of the questions that you've posed.
Ngao Motsei: Societal context matters. Companies are a microcosm of the broader society so what happens at the societal level is going to translate into organisations. So one of the things that organisations don't do that well, those if, if we do that, that they don't do that well is actually have these tough conversations.
The courageous conversations around issues that are happening in society because we bring them inside organisations, those are sometimes some of the starting there because everything else that you do is not going to be sustainable. That's the one thing. The other thing, which is something that I have seen from working in organisations in this space of driving empathy and creating psychological safety.
Any intervention that does not include abrasive leaders that bully themselves is bound not to succeed. Or if it does work, it's not going to be sustainable. So one of the things that I got interested in is actually to understand and to have the voices of the abrasive leaders who bully as part of the solution.
And my philosophy is that you know, leadership is an expression of who we are. So if leadership is an expression of who we are, I really would love to understand what makes certain leaders rub people the wrong way, one of the things that actually I found lies in organisations themselves. The social conditioning that happens and shapes leaders, the hard wiring of leaders.
What do I mean by that? We're living in a fast paced environment, tough economic environment yet there's still expectations of targets. And you would know this Blessing you every time you do, you look at the results. We talk about how are we doing? We want to get to pre covid levels and yet the targets go higher and higher with less people are expected to do more with less. Lots of pressure is a recipe for backstabbing, for doing this for this for individualism.
Those are some of the things there are certain things that are unique also to South Africa from a leadership point of view, more and more tying on to the point Thelma made earlier about authentic leadership.
There's more and more talk about human centered. Leadership, putting humans in the centre of everything that you do and that, that has parallels with our own African Ubuntu philosophy. And the Ubuntu philosophy, there's even a brand of leadership that's called Ubuntu leadership and I think we, instead of us always looking to the worst, it's a matter of leaning into some of our frameworks that shape who we are as a, as a people. Real Causa also talks about, you know, attuned leadership. It really also takes. its roots in Ubuntu as well.
Blessing Utete: That's great. Um, yeah, that Ubuntu leadership, I think that's that's something I'm going to take away, it's a new term I've heard and yeah, it really resonates with what we're trying to achieve. We're going to listen to a clip from a talk that Tyler Waye did earlier this year on what makes high performance teams work.
And I'll get your thoughts on this in a bit.
Tyler Waye: We work for 10, 000 days of our lives, roughly eight hours per day. Why wouldn't we make that a place where we feel like we matter, like we belong? Teams whose people have a true sense of belonging, trust one another.
Blessing Utete: Let's get some initial thoughts on what we've heard in these clips. Maybe we can go to Ngao, maybe you want to give initial thoughts.
Ngao Motsei: Trust is key. How do you build trust? You build the core of this is psychological safety. Amy Edmondson, who's regarded as the guru of psychological safety, says there are three key drivers to psychological safety. Leader behaviour, team, relationships.
And in that clip, they talked about teams, so teams are not just people that are put together it also speaks to the quality of the relationship. And the other thing, why I say trust building what is the foundation of it is psychological safety. Edmondson says psychological safety is the soil so if psychological safety is the soil, then the seed is trust is belonging and all these other wonderful things that we're talking about and key to that part of trust is also about how leaders reframe risks and failure.
So half the time leaders say we'd like you to be innovative with one creativity here, yet they frown when people take risks and fail. So those are critical to building trust. reframing trust and essentially leaders modelling the behaviour that they want.
Blessing Utete: Yeah. Thanks, some great, great insights there. Thelma, your, your, your thoughts?
Thelma Janse Van Rensburg: I think if I can build on this analogy of the soil and the seed and then nurturing the seed, giving it water, giving it sun, those are things that you do to further that relationship, right? Like the feedback and how you give the feedback. So making it a safe environment to be able to bring up failures or mistakes so that you can fail forward, right?
And learn from things you want to do differently, but also recognizing the potential of the seed, recognizing when things are going well and giving that feedback. I also really, you know, in the work that we've done post pandemic in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, it's a very interesting topic when you go deeper, because there was a real push towards inclusion just post pandemic.
And this term now, new term, not new term belonging, right? I mean, in the South African context, we've struggled with this for the longest time, right?
And we still really trying to grapple with what it means to create a space of belonging, right? That recognizes individuals, what they bring and gives them the opportunity to feel that they belong somewhere.
That really stands out for me and it's something that I think leaders cannot forget about, right? In building the right environments for people to do their best work.
Blessing Utete: That's great. I mean, some really good nuggets there on leaders building trust. If I mean, maybe you can just share with us, you know, what role do sort of bystanders and other leaders play.
And how they deal when they see intimidation in workplaces.
Ngao Motsei: One of the things that I talk about is how can leaders create an environment where bystanders develop into upstanders. And I'll make the distinction between bystander and upstander. Bystander is somebody, for example, that witnesses bad behaviour in organisations where they'd be bullying and they keep quiet.
Whereas an upstander, Is somebody that when they observe the bullying or the abrasion meter to to somebody else, they intervene or they report the behaviour. So again, the onus also sits it. It always starts with leaders because leaders cast shadows. People pay more attention to how leaders behave more than what they say.
And one of the first things I believe is to define what bullying or psychological safety means for us. What it looks like so that people can be able to identify it when they see that happening and of course I'm going at the risk of sounding like a broken record then leaders have got to behave that way they have to model the behaviour that they articulate, and most importantly the last thing is that when bullying behaviours are reported then leaders you have to do something about it.
Blessing Utete: Yeah, that's, I like that. Upstanders rather than bystanders. Yeah, it's really a good, good term for all leaders to embrace, maybe if we go to Thelma, just maybe some of your success stories that you've seen in, in the workplace around turning these, these matters around for better environments, improved psychological safety.
Thelma Janse Van Rensburg: Yes, success is a strong word, right? Because it's, it's hard to measure how well the intervention actually was in the end, because it needs a lot of work. You often feel that, okay, now we've identified the problem, we're taking that person out of the environment, things are going to be great. It doesn't end there, it's like rebuilding. How do we rebuild that specific space so that that team then actually come together, you get a new leader in whatever the case may be.
It isn't just about removing an individual that was seen as or identified as the, you know, for lack of a better word, going to call it bully because I've seen that in my career. I've joined a team, we put structures in place. As Dr Ngao said, we put policies in place that was one of the first goals that I had to achieve.
And then, you know, these things came up, we started hearing about like incidents that were happening, and it was a star performer. The person was a really high individual contributor, but now also being a people manager, uh, This was coming at the cost of others performance, right? So we had to deal with the issue.
And I think what often happens is once you've identified a piece of the issue, your kind of knee jerk reaction is let's just deal with that. Let's just deal with that and things will be better. But you have to be more comprehensive in your approach , you have to understand, do we actually need to bring in external support?
Do we need to get someone in who's done work research on this to help us just put some kind of support in place as we rebuild what's been destroyed, right, by that individual in terms of the relationships in the workplace and people's ability to show up and do their work.
Blessing Utete: Thanks, Thelma. And now maybe I'd like maybe just for you to maybe give us some tips around the comment that Thelma made about these. star performers that, you know, there's a temptation to let things lie because you also spoke about the pressure of targets and, and all sorts of things. But, you know, you then have this, Mr. Rogue employee, very strong, but then they are toxic. So maybe just some tips for dealing with that and then maybe your comments on, on successes that you've experienced as well.
Ngao Motsei: Maybe let me start on, on successes. So Thelma, I do have at least is the semblance of what I can call successes. As I said earlier, one of the things that I do, I coach, I work specifically with abrasive leaders that have been accused of bullying.
It takes a lot of courage for somebody to actually agree to come into coaching because it is awful to look in, into the mirror and see what people say about you and the impact that people say about you. So once we've gone through the denial and defence, I'm not a bully, I'm a tough manager and they actually step into vulnerability, all these things that we're talking about and get into coaching.
It's actually incredible when people do make the turnaround. And this is why for me, language is important, I don't refer to people as bullies I refer to them as abrasive leaders that bully because abrasion is a behaviour and with the right support and the right tools to help the leader, you can actually turn around that behaviour.
And when that happens, they become the biggest champions. That is the biggest thing and, and this is probably a nice segue to addressing the question of the performer. Yes, most of the time, some of the biggest abrasive leaders are quote unquote, the biggest performers, performers in that they always meet their targets.
Yes, it is important to drive performance. It is equally important to drive conduct. Leader conduct. How do you drive the results? Because you may be succeeding now, you may be getting the results, but ultimately it may not be sustainable. Why? You lose talent. Because many talented people are not going to stay, where if they feel treated in that way, they are much more resourceful.
It might end up being a revolving door and you spend time and money looking for talent. Once you get them, train them, when they are ready, they leave.
Blessing Utete: Thelma, what advice would you have for other leaders or HR professionals who might be listening about this topic?
Thelma Janse Van Rensburg: I'd go back to what Dr. Ngao said earlier about defining what those things mean at your place of work.
So taking the time, and often, you know, this is easier said than done, but taking the time to sit together and defi ne. What does bullying look like here? What are the things we will not tolerate? And what processes do we have in place where people can you know, speak up and make us aware of these things?
And then how do we create ourselves as the HR professionals in that organisation? How do we ensure that our processes are reliable and trustworthy? Like how do we ensure that people do feel that they can come
and bring these matters to us? But only once you really know what it is that you're working towards, right?
Can you address deviation from that path? Can you address the behaviours that doesn't support that culture?
Blessing Utete: Ngao, would you also give us some advice for leaders and HR professionals listening to this?
Ngao Motsei: In some of the research that I've done in the past, sadly, HR professionals do not come out shiny. One of the findings was that when they go and report matters to HR, HR tends to side with management.
So as a result, people really suffered in silence. My advice or invitation for leaders and starting maybe with HR professionals is for them to be the real people and culture champions. They really have to champion everything that we've been talking about today, which is psychological safety and the most important thing is that for leaders particularly is to actually do something about it.
Intention doesn't matter. People, especially if they're powerful people or leaders, they would say it was not my intention, as long as the target, an employee, feels that the behaviour that has been measured to them impaired that dignity. That is enough for leaders to do something about it.
Blessing Utete: And now in this season, we've now got a cornerstone question, and I'd like to pose this to both of you.
What do you think we haven't said about this topic today? We can start with Thelma.
Thelma Janse Van Rensburg: Thanks, Blessing, I actually want to go back to, you know, we've discussed a lot about seeing this in the workplace and how to address it as leadership, but If I'm on the receiving end of it, right? What are some things that I can do for myself to maybe fi rst really understand the severity of what's happening to me, right?
And then how do I deal with it in a way that I can feel that someone is actually going to take the time to listen? Cause I mean, there are ways to speak up when something like this is happening and I would actually love to hear Dr. Ngao’s advice on whether I'm in middle management with I'm a individual contributor in the organisation If I'm experiencing this from a very senior leader in the organisation.
How do I? How do I get to a place where I can actually raise the concerns?
Blessing Utete: Yeah, I think that's also, yeah, it's a good one to, to actually tackle, you know, what, you know, if I'm actually experiencing bullying, what can I do practically? And I can also be a leader, but I'm experiencing it myself. Now I'm hearing this, what can I do?
Ngao Motsei: That's a very good question because there's also something called upward bullying, something that we haven't spoken about here. Upward bullying, it's possible for someone to be bullied by the subordinate.
A typical example is that we are peers, there's a position, we both apply for it, I get it, all of a sudden the roles have changed.
You were peers, now I'm your manager, but whether you like it or not, if you're a target at some point, you're going to have to quote unquote confront the leader that is bullying you and you better make sure when you do that you have at the very least evidence. So it is important to document what is happening.
Blessing Utete: Thanks for those tips Ngao. And then maybe just your final thoughts in terms of anything else that we haven't spoken about in this topic.
Ngao Motsei: What we haven't touched on today is what is not bullying and what psychological safety is not. And understandably, it's important to defi ne and understand bullying, but very quickly, what bullying is not is not when, because there have also been instances where employees have also crowdfired.
The people are not given all the resources and the support that they require and are not performing and when they're being held accountable, they say they're being bullied. So holding people accountable and in a reasonable way.
What psychological safety is not, is also, it's not just about niceness, we're not talking about niceness, and it's not about relinquishing your
responsibility as a manager, and it's not about political correctness. The key is how.
Blessing Utete: What a nice way to close our episode today. I'm sure you've helped many listeners today just understand these issues at a deeper level and feel empowered to play their part in building happier work cultures and that will benefit employees going forward. So really on behalf of me and the team, thank you so much for joining us today.
Ngao Motsei: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thelma Janse Van Rensburg: Thank you, Blessing.
Blessing Utete: There are many practical ways businesses can champion holistic well being in the workspace. Here are three ways to help your employees manage their mental health.
Firstly, leaders can create safe spaces for employees to discuss mental health concerns without fear of judgement. Educational workshops and awareness campaigns can help normalise conversations around mental well being.
Secondly, work life balance is also crucial for mental well being. Offering flexible work options such as remote work schedules, compressed work weeks, and parental leave can alleviate stress and empower employees to manage their personal lives.
Lastly, employers can also promote healthy habits through employee well being programs and incentives.
A product like Strove, Old Mutual's comprehensive solution addressing both physical and psychological well being, uses behavioural science and game design principles to create positive and sustainable behavioural change through video workouts consultations with life coaches and therapists.
Prioritising mental well being is no longer a cost. It's an investment with a significant return. Businesses that demonstrate a genuine commitment to mental well being cultivate a happier, healthier, and more productive workforce. If you enjoyed this episode of Big Business Insights, please like, follow, and subscribe.
Also sign up to receive the monthly newsletter from Old Mutual Corporate. You can check the show notes for more information.