Take a Deep Breath … Relax: Stress and Mindfulness in the Workplace

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By Dan Gephart, November 14, 2018

Is everybody stressed out at work, or does it just seem that way? Why is everybody so stressed? What can we do about this stress? Why do I keep asking questions about stress? Are all of these questions STRESSING you out?

We actually know why people are stressed in the workplace thanks to the American Institute of Stress. Workload issues (45%), people issues (28%), juggling work and family life (20%), and lack of job security (6%) are the leading reasons.

And we know that stress leads to increased workplace accidents, absenteeism, reduced productivity and even workplace violence, as FELTG President Bill Wiley discussed in a recent FELTG News Flash.

And with the holiday season in full swing starting next week, we’re about to hit the most wonderfully stressful time of the year.  What can we do to tame all this workplace stress?

I reached out to the amazing Phillis Morgan, founder of Resilient at Work. I was fortunate enough to edit a book on labor relations that Phillis wrote a few years ago. Phillis is a former federal labor and employment lawyer who worked with the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Defense, and with conflict-riddled environments in Afghanistan, Uganda, and Nepal.  For her advisory work in Afghanistan, Phillis was awarded the NATO Service Medal, Secretary of Defense Medal for the Global War on Terrorism, and the Joint Civilian Service Achievement Award.

Earlier this year, she wrote an article on “Fierce Leadership” for a Federal Manager Association publication. I suggest you track it down.

DG: How does anxiety impact performance, particularly for federal managers?

PM: Anxiety and stress are of significant concern for American employees in general, and certainly for managers in the federal work space. Workplace stress and anxiety are related, multi-faceted issues that increasingly are of huge concern to employers and society at large. Anxiety has both a psychological and physical dimension. According to the American Psychological Association, anxiety is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure.

Stress is the emotional and physiological response to a trigger. In both cases, our perceptions of the external event make a big difference in whether we regard the event as anxiety or stress-inducing. Not all stress is “bad,” and a healthy level of stress can contribute to optimum performance. For example, a manager can interpret a tight deadline as a positively motivating challenge, producing a healthy stress response. A new project where the learning curve is high can be interpreted as a positively stressful event or a negative one.  Unfortunately, what managers and other employees are experiencing today, and have for some time, are critical and escalating levels of workplace stress.

DG: What suggestions do you have for managers and supervisors who are feeling overwhelmed?

PM: The research is clear that the most stressful type of work is that which values excessive demands and pressures that are not matched to workers’ knowledge and abilities, where there is little opportunity to exercise any choice or control, and where there is little support from others. In fact, a gap between control versus demands is associated with increased rates of heart attack, hypertension and other disorders.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommends that any serious stress reduction program include an effort to remove or reduce the sources of stress at work, such as job redesign or organizational changes, not just manage stress levels on an individual basis.

This view is consistent with the findings of Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer in his latest book titled, “Dying for a Paycheck.”  Pfeffer’s central argument in the book – like NIOSH’s – is that employers need to focus more on those management practices that are leading to substantial health issues in the first place, practices such as layoffs, job insecurity, toxic cultures and long hours.

So, that’s the place to start: Managers and supervisors should turn inward to examine the organizational and managerial policies and practices they have which may be contributing to the problem, and look for ways to redesign them. At the same time, managers and supervisors can take steps to manage their stress and improve their overall well-being.  Here are some strategies that the research demonstrates are the most effective in combating stress and a sense of overwhelm:

Awareness. This includes increasing awareness of your stressful triggers and your responses to them. This is also known as mindfulness.

Reframing the problem or situation. What is the story you are telling yourself about the situation? Is it really a problem? Is it really as disastrous as the story you are spinning?  Can you reframe it in a way that doesn’t seem so overwhelming or intractable?

Task management. Can you delegate any part of the task? Can you break it down into more management chunks?

Exercise. It increases the production of endorphins, (your brain’s feel-good neurotransmitters), improves mood, is relaxing, reduces the symptoms associated with mild depression and anxiety, and can improve sleep.

Meditation. Calming meditation practices such as sitting meditation, moving meditation, (yoga), or breathing exercises promote the body’s relaxation response, groundedness, and resilience.

Get some support. Reach out to, and accept help from, trusted friends and family members. Contact the employee assistance program (EAP) for further guidance and counseling, and referral to mental health professionals, if needed.

DG: Mindfulness is not a widely accepted practice in the workplace. While that’s changing, there are still a lot of people, including supervisors, who don’t take the topic seriously. Do you still deal with negative bias about the term when doing training? And how do you deal with it?

 PM: Many years ago when I first tried introducing mindfulness to workplaces, employers thought it was too woo woo and there was significant reluctance. There’s been a sea change since then with mindfulness becoming much better accepted as a management and leadership strategy.  A client who is a manager at one of the larger agencies suggested I start with the science behind how mindfulness works and that’s what I do, and it really resonates with managers. I’ve been studying and working with these practices for 15 years so for me, personally, I like relating to the practices from a more intuitive or less heavily intellectual approach. Yet, I can understand that for someone who is unfamiliar with mindfulness, combined with perhaps the myths surrounding it, entering from a science gateway is more comfortable. It’s really not a problem because the science is there, supporting what people have been experiencing as the benefits of mindfulness for thousands of years. However a manager or supervisor wants to orient to the subject, there is room. Gephart@FELTG.com

A Gritty Approach to Avoiding First Impression Hiring Mistakes

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By Dan Gephart, October 17, 2018

Author J.K. Rowling wrote in one of those boy wizard books: “First impressions can work wonders.” Well, they didn’t work wonders for J.K. Her first Harry Potter book was rejected by 12 different publishers before it found a home and became an industry all its own.

First impressions aren’t to be emphatically embraced, but tempered with caution.

Exhibit A: Gritty.

The Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League introduced Gritty as their new mascot on a recent Monday morning. What stands out on the seven-foot-tall mound of unkempt orange fur is the set of googly eyes that never blink. Media called Gritty a big orange blob, a creep, terrifying nightmare fuel, a cross between Elmo and Grimace gone wrong, the Babadook of professional sports, and the most frightening mascot ever invented. There was widely held agreement that he had a major substance abuse problem.

Gritty was the laughingstock of social media. Within a few hours of his introduction, he was photoshopped into images from every horror movie imaginable. People shared videos showing their young children screaming at the sight of Gritty’s monstrosity.

As morning moved into afternoon, it became clear: The Flyers had made a miscalculation of epic proportions. Gritty was the New Coke of mascots. The Flyers haven’t won a Stanley Cup since Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. Maybe Gritty needed to vanish, too.

But then the unexpected happened. People started to embrace Gritty. Perhaps, the mascot’s human side came out when he slipped on the ice during his first night on the job. Or maybe people felt bad about the abuse he was taking. Maybe people liked the resiliency Gritty showed as he got pummeled all over the Internet. Whatever it was, fans (most, not all) got over their shocking first impressions.

First impressions are formed within milliseconds and based heavily on our biases. I sometimes get mistrustful when someone offers me a limp handshake or fails to look me in the eyes when greeting me. I have to regularly remind myself: There are many reasons why someone may not have a firm handshake or may look down at the ground when we meet. It could be ability-related, or there could be cultural or religious reasons.

All hiring managers are trained at some point to avoid the “Just Like Me Complex.” Whether we admit it or not, we are biased in favor of people like us, whether it’s our race, gender, political beliefs, education, or personality. You are all aware of the study that found that resumes bearing African American or Hispanic names received half as many callbacks as those with more traditional white names.

First impressions lead to untold poor hiring decisions every day. Let the job candidate worry about that first impression. You need to make a decision that isn’t based on that initial gut feeling. Here are some ways to avoid the first impression trap:

  1. Self-identify your biases and be aware of the role they play when making personnel decisions.
  2. Focus on the objective, job-related qualification standards of the position for which you’re hiring.
  3. Ask the same questions of all candidates. (While you’re at it, make sure to leave out any questions that border on illegality.)
  4. Take careful notes during each interview. The notes will help you make the best decisions. They will also help protect you if there is a future discrimination claim.

If you’re unsure of any of these suggestions, well get yourself some training. As you know, we offer that training – and we do it quite well.

By the way, Gritty’s week got much better after that rough start. There were appearances on Good Morning America and the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. In a sports world overrun with forgettable sports mascots, Gritty appears here to stay.

May you see the true Gritty in your next hire. Gephart@FELTG.com

 

Michael Keaton, Burt Reynolds, and the FMLA

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By Dan Gephart, September 19, 2018

Thanks to Facebook, I’m reminded of the birthday of that odd kid from sixth grade who had the massive nosebleed problems and carried a Land of the Lost lunchbox. However, Mark Zuckerberg’s programmers failed to remind me of a more important birthday last month — the FMLA’s 25th. That’s right, the Family and Medical Leave Act has been around for a quarter-century. President Clinton signed the bill into law in early 1993. Six months later – August 5, 1993 to be exact – the law went into effect.

The birthday snub aside, I have a lot of affection for the FMLA. Twenty-four years ago, I took advantage of the then-new law. It was three months after my second son was born, and my wife’s maternity leave was ending. She needed to get back to work. We couldn’t afford for either of us to lose our job. Unfortunately, our initial child-care plans fell through. Then our back-up plans fell through. And our back-up to the back-up plans.

After much deliberation, we decided I’d stay home for the next three months with our two sons – the oldest of whom had yet to reach age two. This could help buy time as we figured out another child care option with which we were comfortable. We’d be living on one salary, but only for a short time.

What a time it was! Those three months at home with our young sons are among the happiest of my life. I can’t begin to describe the immense joy I feel when I think about those days.

Still, I missed work and was happy to go back three months later. What didn’t bring me joy was some of my coworkers’ reactions upon my return. While Michael Keaton is awesome, the Mr. Mom jokes … not so much. I also didn’t appreciate the comments referring to my three months as a vacation. And if you really wanted to get on my bad side, all you had to do was ask what it was like “baby-sitting” for three months. People, it’s not baby-sitting if they are your own kids! Also, spending time with your kids or taking them out in public without your wife doesn’t necessarily make you a great dad. It makes you a dad.

[Stage direction: Dan steps off his soapbox.]

The FMLA has made a difference in people’s lives, whether it’s meant being able to spend time with critically ill parents, bond with newly born or adopted children, recover from a serious health condition, or care for a spouse injured during military service.

Of course, there are people who try to take advantage of the law. I asked my FELTG colleague Barbara Haga – the FMLA expert – for her favorite stories of FMLA misuse. She reminded me about the letter carrier who invoked FMLA because of a back problem that caused numbness in his left arm and left leg. During his FMLA time off, he played eight games in an out-of-state national softball tournament. When confronted about how he could play softball but not deliver mail, he testified that softball wasn’t really a physical sport. Oh, and he also used the time to travel to Alaska.

Barbara has a new FMLA case that she’s discussing in her classes: “A GS-9 medical technologist with the VA took FMLA to bond with his infant child but was found to have been working at a private clinic for some of that time. Needless to say, he was removed, and the removal was affirmed by the AJ.”

My personal favorite story of FMLA abuse involves the federal employee who took FMLA only to be discovered using his job-protected time off to act in a movie featuring the recently departed Bandit himself — Burt Reynolds.

It’s not just federal employees. The private sector stories are even more ludicrous. Employees have used FMLA to put on a new roof, do jail time, and finish Christmas shopping. In that last case, the employee’s doctor cited the employee’s need for “retail therapy.”

The overall benefits of FMLA outweigh the challenges. But man, there are some serious challenges. Employees misuse FMLA in the most creative ways possible. You are the gatekeeper, and it’s not an easy task.

As always, FELTG is here to help. Join us in early 2019 for the webinar series Too Sick to Work: Absence Due to Illness. Also, you can register early for Absence, Leave Abuse & Medical Issues Week, which takes place on March 25-29, 2019 in Washington, DC.  We have a  star-studded cast of leave experts — Deborah Hopkins, Katherine Atkinson, Meghan Droste, and the aforementioned Barbara Haga. Gephart@FELTG.com

Playing the Shame Game

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By Dan Gephart, August 15, 2018

Imagine spending a beautiful summer day at the ballpark. You have great seats along the first base side. Foul balls routinely make their way towards you – four to be exact. The first three balls you pick up and immediately hand over to youngsters in your section. The fourth foul ball you grab and, remembering it’s your anniversary, hand to your wife who is sitting next to you. It’s smiles all around.

It sounds like a perfect day. But it’s not.

You see, a video of you snagging that fourth foul ball is being shared at alarming rates on Twitter. The video makes it look like you snubbed the cute little boy a row in front of you. You are trending and not in a good way. After all, what kind of monster doesn’t give a foul ball to a kid?

If you’re a baseball fan or a Twitter user, you are familiar with the video taken during a recent Chicago Cubs game. Heck, you may have retweeted the video along with the comments “jerk” or “a—hole,” or maybe you are the Twitter user who called for the man to “be publicly shamed and booed for hours.” I’m not even mentioning the tweets that called for a good old-fashioned physical beatdown.

If there’s one thing we Americans are especially good at, it’s shaming others. Facts? We don’t need no stinking facts. Context? Ha! Let’s shame!

I was thinking about the baseball fiasco as I read a story last week about two former EPA career employees. Michael Cox worked at the EPA for more than 25 years, most recently as a climate change adviser. Elizabeth Southerland had more than 30 years of EPA experience when she left.

Both resignations were political. The departing employees made it known that they were unhappy with the agency’s direction under then-Administrator Scott Pruitt. Cox certainly left with a bang, writing a scathing five-page letter to Pruitt and sharing it with his EPA colleagues.

The best thing would’ve been to let this blow over.

An EPA spokesman took a different tack, telling reporters that Cox was expressing “faux outrage” and that the real reason for his resignation was so he could cash in on his “six-figure taxpayer-funded pension.” (A year and a few FOIA requests later, we now know that Cox’s pension, minus benefits and taxes, falls well below that “six-figure” threshold.)

The same communications team pitched a story to news outlets that Southerland left for similar reasons.

This was clearly an attempt to shame the former federal employees.

Does anybody remember former VA social worker Robin Paul? Barbara Haga wrote about her extensively in our July 2015 newsletter. Unlike our Cubs fan, Paul really did commit an awful act, or at the very least, she suffered a serious lapse in judgment. She sent an email to her staff that included images that mocked veterans by placing a toy elf in various positions. (You really have to see it to understand. But it was awful.) Paul was placed on administrative leave while the VA investigated. She agreed to a 90-day suspension of her clinical license.

Meanwhile, the Shame Patrol came out in full force, publicly arguing for Paul’s termination. This was followed by death threats. After her children were harassed, the family was forced to seek police protection. Finally, Paul, who had an otherwise excellent work history, resigned before the VA even finished its investigation, pleading to be left alone.

She got what she deserved, you might say. Well, that’s pretty harsh. Then again, the Shamers don’t deal in nuance. Read through Jon Ronson’s highly engaging 2015 book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” and you’ll understand why social media shaming has become the modern-day equivalent of a public flogging.

But as purveyors of discipline in your agency, you can’t afford to listen to the Shamers. You need to gather the facts, weigh the evidence, and carefully determine the penalty. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to work really hard to tune out these Shame Spreaders. If you’ve been on Twitter or Facebook lately or read any newspaper’s comments section, you know that these Internet vigilantes aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Gephart@FELTG.com

That’s My Story

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By Dan Gephart, July 18, 2018

I’m married to a talented and successful children’s book author. She tells stories for a living. I’m proud of the work she does because she tells the stories of people from whom we don’t often hear. And her stories evoke empathy, which is sorely lacking in our world today.

But published authors aren’t the only ones who tell stories. We all have stories.

In these hyper-partisan times, opposing stories can quickly subsume a federal workplace in conflict.

The stories we carry don’t come in chapters or wrapped in fancy book covers. And they don’t end when you turn the last page. The stories are buried on top of each other deep within us and they shade the way we address everything and everyone. We think our stories are 100 percent truth. But the real truth is that even the most accurate stories we tell have a decent percentage that belongs on the fiction shelves.

Whether you are a supervisor, an HR professional, or an EEO practitioner, you need to understand your own stories, as you navigate those of your employees. We may not agree with the stories we hear, but we need to listen. That’s not to say that every story we hear needs to be validated and acted upon. But you don’t get to truth by shouting over someone.

I find the work of agency investigators to be fascinating. They are looking for answers in some of the most emotionally draining and intellectually challenging situations, whether they are investigating simple misconduct or harassment.

In one of our recent on-site trainings, Meghan Droste presented agency officials a thorough dive into the administrative investigation process. Reviewing the materials recently, the section on interviewing stood out. It was great information for investigators, but something that can benefit everyone. Meghan laid out clearly the difference between interrogations and interviews.

  • While interrogations aim for a confession, interviews seek to gather information.
  • An interrogation is structured. Interviews are free-flowing.
  • And here’s the big one: Interrogations are more speaking than listening. Meghan put the ratio at 95 talking to 5 percent listening. Interviews, on the other hand, are all about listening. The ratio is flipped the other way.

If we approach our discussions with our colleagues, peers, subordinates, and supervisors more as interviews, and less as interrogations, we might be able to better understand each other’s stories.

Anyway, that’s my story. And I’m sticking to it. Gephart@FELTG.com

Why Do We Hide This Stuff?

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By William Wiley, July 18, 2018

Here’s the beginning of a story that recently ran on the first page of the Style section of the Washington Post:

The Washington Post has dismissed a reporter for inadequately attributing material and closely parroting sentences from other publications in articles based on outside news sources. The reporter, [Jane Doe], 26, was let go last week before completing the newsroom’s mandatory nine-month probationary period for new employees. The Post’s editors found that she used without proper attribution reporting by at least a dozen other news organizations in articles she wrote since being hired in October.

The article goes on from here, describing the misconduct in detail as well as giving a bit of history about the (now former) employee’s resume.

Are you blown away by this? Isn’t it illegal or something to disclose the details of an individual’s termination? In fact, we’ve even Jane Doe-ed her real name here in our newsletter. We sure don’t want to reveal names in the federal government.

Well, maybe we should.

Most members of the public, as well as a lot of federal employees themselves, believe that a federal employee cannot be fired. Both Congress and the White House keep trying to make it easier to hold employees accountable for their performance and conduct by loosening the rules. We are on the verge of losing our civil service protections altogether if a couple of outlier Congressional bills become law, bills that would make the federal civil service “employment at will.”

In reality, hundreds of individuals are fired from federal agencies every month. Some are in unions while others do not have the extra protections that unions bargain for their members. Some are probationers, and some are tenured career employees. At least that’s what OPM statistics tell us, statistics that are consistent with MSPB’s annual report of appeals. But how would anyone know that if they were not an insider in the system, familiar with OPM and MSPB reports, or a reader of our beloved FELTG Newsletter?

You’re probably thinking that there must be a federal law that prohibits the disclosure of such information. Why would we make such a big deal out of it if there weren’t? Well, I’ve been looking for 40 years for a law or regulation that would prohibit the disclosure of the identity of and circumstances surrounding terminated civil servants, and I can’t find one. In fact, of the few cases that touch on the subject, the federal courts have come down on the side of mandating the disclosure of such information when it is requested under the Freedom of Information Act, at least for the more senior employees of an agency. When we’re talking about government employees, the balance between the individual’s rights to privacy, and the rights of the public to know about misconduct and unacceptable performance, the public’s need for information usually gets the judicial nod.

The Privacy Act often is referenced as the authority for not releasing information about employee malfeasance. However, that law allows for the release of information for a “routine use.” If OPM government-wide or an agency in its own Federal Register announcement would state that the release of discipline and conduct information by name was a routine use for collecting the record, that would seem to satisfy the legal requirements for privacy.

The salary and cash awards of federal employees are already a matter of public record, available on the web. There’s a relatively mundane need for the public to know that information. We can certainly make a good argument that knowing who has engaged in misconduct harming the government so much that they had to be fired serves a greater public good. Bar association discipline records are available for public review by the name of the offending attorney. Keeping the names of misbehaving federal employees secret enables that person to move on to other positions in which he can repeat his harmful ways. If a federal employee was fired for violent behavior, wouldn’t it serve a public good to make the public aware of who that person is? How about being fired for sexual harassment?

President Trump, through his recent Executive Order, has mandated the centralized collection of a lot of information about civil servants who are disciplined. For the sake of the public as well as for the sake of the federal employees who do good work and who obey the rules, perhaps it’s time that government agencies publicized their discipline and removal actions. If you’re a Big Coward, remove the names, but at least start to get the word out to the broad media that bad employees are fired from their government positions every day for good reasons. Maybe that will reduce the pressure that’s starting to build to do away with the idea of a protected civil service altogether. Wiley@FELTG.com

Let’s Embrace Change

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By Dan Gephart, July 9, 2018

Hello FELTG Nation!

Do you mind if we talk about change?

As I write this, I’m gazing at a For Sale sign that looks oddly out of place on my sun burnt front lawn. This concrete box I sit in has sheltered numerous Gephart humans and four-legged creatures since the new millennium. I’m not just leaving this house, though. I’ll be fleeing the Sunshine State, which has been home since my two adult sons were toddlers, or as we affectionately call them here “gator brunch.”

And that’s not even the biggest change. This week I started a new job for the first time in more than 23 years. Twenty-three years! That was so long ago, Al Gore was still reinventing government and smashing ashtrays.

But I don’t need to tell you about change.

You live with change every day.

I know. As the former long-time program chair of a certain federal training conference that I will not name (rhymes with FDR), I saw how change, along with fear of the unknown, drives people to training sessions.

Change leads to overcrowded classes about transgender employees. It packs rooms of HR professionals trying to figure out how to stop sexual harassment claims. It leaves people willfully standing for three-hour workshops to hear the latest guidance on how to handle reasonable accommodation requests for telework.

And I haven’t even mentioned the concern and confusion surrounding the president’s recent civil service-related Executive Orders or plans to reorganize the federal government.

Change can be stressful, unpredictable, and downright scary.

But change can also be, and often is, good.

Agencies should be more inclusive to all employees, and that means educating yourself about transgender workplace issues. We must hold accountable those managers and employees who practice harassment of any type. You’d better know what to do when an employee asks you for a reasonable accommodation.

These new executive orders, at least the ones dealing with performance, actually provide a great opportunity to more efficiently handle poor performers.

And if you think requests for telework are going to decrease anytime soon, I have some Florida swampland to sell you. No, really, I do. It’s a three-bedroom in a nice family neighborhood. Competitively priced. Give me a call.

Embrace that fear of the unknown. Lean into it. As someone much smarter than I said: Change is the only constant in life.

Change has landed me here at FELTG. This is a dream come true. I couldn’t be happier and more excited to work with Bill Wiley and Deb Hopkins, and the uber-talented group of FELTG instructors, including legends Barbara Haga and Ernie Hadley. These fine people work tirelessly to improve the quality and efficiency of the federal workplace. I don’t use the word tirelessly lightly. I’ve seen their schedules.

I also appreciate the chance to continue working with all of you – the faithful civil servants who loyally serve the taxpayers despite sometimes undesirable working conditions and constantly shifting political agendas, all the while ducking the uninformed insults regularly hurled your way.

Let’s step into this change together. It may be challenging, but nobody said we couldn’t have fun while navigating it. Gephart@FELTG.com