The past few years have seen a massive turnaround in the awareness of mental health conditions and how they affect us in the workplace. Phrases like trigger warning, PTSD, and workplace toxicity are becoming commonplace and a wider acceptance of the importance of nurturing mental health has been found.
The key to building positive and inclusive workspaces that feed resilient mindsets is ensuring our communication remains open. The way to do that is by facilitating a ‘coaching culture’ – putting the team ahead of yourself and remaining open to learning.
Govender says the first thing to understand is that a workplace’s policies and procedures should guide the behaviour within that space. He says, “It’s clear to me that businesses with well-established values generally have healthier cultures and happy employees.” This reinforces the need to establish a foundation of values that guide an organisation.
Whilst most large organisations have a budget for employee wellness and training, Govender says these waters can become murky in small to medium-sized companies where there is not always a budget allocated to fully-fledged human capital needs.
Taking stock of what being triggered means
In his typical humorous manner, Govender likens being triggered with this analogy: ‘If you squeeze an orange, apple juice won’t come out.’
What this means is that nobody can force anger out of you. Govender’s advice is that if you find that a certain manager or coworker continually brings out frustration in you, there may be some internal work you need to do ahead of approaching the HR department to file a complaint. He suggests journaling to better examine the scenarios that have been playing out by questioning and answering yourself honestly:
● Have I done what is expected of me in this role?
● Am I fulfilling the duties of my position?
● Did I behave respectfully towards my team?
● What has upset me most about this conflict?
How to separate your emotions when a work culture is toxic
Once you have a better understanding of the role you have played, there are different ways to approach a solution. Being in a professional environment, Govender says that the best thing to do is to rely on existing policies and procedures to guide the process.
The truth is, anyone who is bullying or harassing employees will be taken to task if the organisation is invested in their growth. As difficult as it may be, it is worth looking at if the job is vital to your overall career growth, and if there could be better options available.
According to Govender, the hardest part can be the self-awareness journey when individuals realise that perhaps their boss was acting within reason, but they have allowed their own emotions of overwhelm to control and guide the situation. It can be very normal for workplaces to be stressful and demanding, the difference lies in how an individual copes with the demands of a job.
Moving past stress to thrive
A toxic work environment is different from an environment in which an individual may not thrive and recognising this is key to recovering from workplace trauma. Govender has witnessed that people tend to spotlight the negative elements of their workspaces, which seems to heighten their feelings of insecurity and anxiety.
Having a ‘crucial conversation’ with a manager is tough, but the best start is having a hard conversation with yourself. Recovering from bullying at work requires confidence-building exercises and the willingness to take accountability. This is Govender’s advice about how to get back to being the best version of you:
● Constantly work on yourself. This can be doing anything important to you and is not limited to growing your career. Commit to doing things that make you happy.
● Set healthy boundaries. This is a hard one but decide on non-negotiables around your health, work life, and hobbies. Don’t allow yourself to feel guilty if you must start doing less for others to prioritise self-care.
● Stop seeking external validation. Decide on the values you wish to uphold and set goals to achieve them. Do not only seek affirmation from others as you can validate yourself by acknowledging your strengths.
By Alvin Govender
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Alvin Govender is one of South Africa’s leading business coaches and a valuable resource for managing stress in the workplace. Having successfully created a career around his passion for mentoring, Govender has helped some of the county’s leading CEOs build healthy workplace cultures.