Most of us would most likely agree that the stress, exhaustion and other fallout we suffer from toxic people can often stick with us long after the “exposure.”  So when we can’t avoid such situations and people altogether (always the preferred course of action!), it’s important that we at least minimize the negative effects.  This is important for many reasons with our mental health and the quality of our days being at the top of the list.  One way to do this is to prepare in advance a few constructive responses to the poisonous attitudes, remarks and looks of toxic folks.  This includes how we respond verbally with our words, physically with our body language and inwardly or how we let it affect us (and for how long).   Otherwise, we can get caught off guard even when we are  in those all too familiar negative situations we know from experience to expect with certain co-workers, relatives and other acquaintances.

Staying in the present moment is also critical to minimizing the stress caused by and harmful effects of negative people.  This means focusing on and truly living each moment at hand rather than remaining in the past or projecting too far into the future (i.e. brooding over past negative/toxic moments or fearing future ones).   Our efforts to successfully minimize and detoxify any negativity around us must be done with our full attention and confidence…neither of which can exist if we’re stuck mentally in the past or future.

Finally, we should ask ourselves often what personal habits or traits we should change or do differently.  Do we need an attitude adjustment, to rethink what our body language says with or without the help of our words?  And, what about how we speak — our tone — and choice of words?  A key question is what are we doing to fuel or enhance the toxicity of negative people?  Or worse, are we someone that others would describe as negative or toxic to be around?  It’s far easier to criticize what others are doing wrong than it is to identify, face and eliminate our bad habits or harmful ways of communicating.

Bottom line — before we can succeed at minimizing the stress brought upon us by toxic people, we must look into that painful mirror of truth, squarely face our need-to-improve characteristics and work hard on eliminating our own negative — maybe even toxic – attitudes and actions.  And, if we’re being brutally honest with ourselves, we all have plenty of room for improvement.

In summary:

• We should avoid toxic people or negative environments as best we can, but recognizing that isn’t always possible to do;
• We can decide and plan in advance how we are going to handle such moments constructively and proactively;
• By living and staying solidly in the present moment, we can reduce the stress caused by hanging onto past negative situations or fearing  more of the same in the future; and
• We should stay closely in touch with and minimize any negativity we may be bringing to the mix via our attitudes, actions, non-actions, tones or words

I love the saying (author unknown), “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns…or…rejoice because thorns have roses.”  We can complain endlessly about the stress caused by negative people in our lives or rejoice because we can take proactive and healthy steps to reduce the stress.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know low morale = stressed employees = a lower quality of work product including more mistakes are made.  Management and leadership who fail to put a stop to workplace bullying of any sort often bury their heads even further in the sand these employees just happen to be major income producers.

Bottom line is this — if verbal violence and other bullying behaviors are not stopped in their tracks, there is an obvious absence of smart, effective and progressive leadership.  In my opinion, this makes leadership and management as guilty as the actual bullies are for causing the resulting and ongoing widespread negative effects.  Thanks for “listening” as always and let me know if you want me to tell you how I really feel!

All the Best,

Nancy

• Rules applied sporadically and unfairly among employees (e.g. starting time, length of lunch breaks, # of vacation days)
• An ongoing frantic pace — day after day — caused primarily by a supervisor’s poor planning and organizational skills … leadership should step in sooner than later to coach, train and/or mentor these folks….of which the legal profession and many others have a costly excess!
• Guilt trips over personal, sick or vacation time taken (see NBJ 2002 Lawyers USA column on how vacation policies …and attitudes… mirror a firm’s culture)
• Thinking that “real” lawyers always work a 60+ hour week and lacking the wisdom to understand that the most productive and satisfied employee lives a balanced and healthy life style (e.g. In addition to encouraging healthy behaviors, consider providing an exercise room for employees — even a small one with one treadmill and an aerobics workout video is better than none — and 10 minutes of exercise can rejuvenate energy levels far better than pouring on the caffeine)
• Frequent start/stops of promised (and needed) changes — too often not completing projects begun
• Allowing tensions or outright conflicts between partners or other employees to go unresolved for an unreasonable length of time (If they refuse to resolve their differences in a timely and responsible manner, firm leadership should mandate a resolution via the use of a firm ombudsman, mediator or the like — Every employee should have access to excellent resources such as Stewart Levine’s 2nd Edition of Getting To Resolution – eye-opening, thought-provoking and packed with simple and wise conflict resolution tips)
• Little or no constructive feedback given to employees in a timely manner
• Assuming staff have no personal plans after normal working hours and that they will always work overtime on short notice (the poison to morale of this culprit escalates in direct relation to poor planning and/or procrastination by supervising personnel)
• Acceptance by leadership of loud, abrasive, demeaning and other bully like behaviors
• A noticeable lack of common courtesies shown to employees (Good Morning greetings, showing appreciation, etc.)
• An absence of well deserved bonuses from cash to creative “Job Well Done” gifts (e.g. childcare fees paid for a week, dinner and other gift certificates, “free” personal days off, firm-wide recognition for achievements, etc.)
• Not holding regular staff meetings and if they are held, failing to give it our full, undivided attention (e.g. no looking at our watches or mobile phones, no shuffling of files around on our desks, etc.)
• Attorneys not taking the time to personally introduce staff members who will be working on the case to new clients
• Expecting top notch work quality produced at a 90 mph pace in spite of outdated equipment and software, unclear instructions, and/or insufficient training
• Romantic relationships between supervisors and subordinates giving the presumption — if not the actuality of –  unfair advantages for the participating employee
• Never (or too rarely) sending employees to appropriate work-related seminars or workshops for training and networking purposes
• Not providing the right kind and adequate amounts of training needed for new software, systems, etc.
• Talking negatively about employees (directly or within earshot) to other employees
• Failing to put an end to an employee’s chronically negative attitude either through mentoring, discipline or termination (firing should, of course, be the last resort after all other reasonable efforts to correct the situation)
• All work 24/7 day after day after day….Never making the time for non-work related group activities (e.g. sporting events, cookouts, community group volunteer projects)

A few Morale Boosters include:

• Not allowing any of the above morale busters or others to exist in your office; and …
• when they or other morale busters do occasionally show up, acting quickly and decisively to rid your office of these progress, morale and productivity thieves

Happy Weekend everyone and I hope you go into work on Monday ready to try out some new morale boosters! We all function far better in a positive environment regardless of our type of work, title or years of service.   As always, thanks for visiting my blog.

Nancy (& Jessie, our resident Tennessee Walker comedian!)

And so we must cherish all the good moments of our holidays and give them the highest priority in our memory banks. Better yet, after duly noting any lessons to be learned from our unpleasant life experiences, we benefit tremendously (mentally and physically) from assigning  our bad memories a permanent “time out” status.  In fact, deep breathing myself back into the present moment and living each one fully are among my most valuable stress management “tools.”  I count on these “tools” when I get stuck dwelling on painful past memories or unproductively worrying about the future.  Don’t get me wrong …. planning ahead wisely is a worthwhile endeavor….unproductive worrying, however, is costly.  It costs us the moments at hand, stress and usually resolves nothing … unproductive.

This familiar quote rings so true with me …..”We don’t remember days…we remember moments.” So with another holiday season upon us, I will be looking for and cherishing all the good moments that occur with family and friends and I will refuse to let the not-so-good ones dampen my spirits. How about you?

Nancy

With all that said, my husband and I do pretty good at making room for mini-breaks in our lives even if only for a fleeting few minutes or hours.  Still, we allowed  too many years to slip by before we took our an extended break from the world.  We tried to get away in 2008 but our house sitter fell through at the last minute (which meant a painful vacation rental deposit forfeiture in addition to the disappointment of it all…Grrrrrr).

Back to our recent “escape” from reality…. for 11 days, it was just the two of us…no work travels, no client calls, no horses, donkeys, dogs, cats to feed, tend to, no tense or toxic communications to survive…in other words, none of the normal twists and turns of our busy lives (Okay..I admit I did a little bit of twittering and email replying but it was truly a very little for me!).  And our vacation was truly wonderful from start to finish…perhaps the vacation life style we lived would be boring to many people as we didn’t run ourselves to death trying to see the sights, try out new restaurants or other typical vacation activities for many……we just stayed put as “they” say.  With the ocean as our backdrop, we hunkered down with plenty of food, books, good music, rocking chairs and movies.  TV was an option but was rarely turned on.  Ditto re my laptop.  It was quiet, restful, healing, uplifting and basically like one long, slow 11-day deep breath! Excuse the redundancy, but it truly was a rare and greatly appreciated “time off for good behavior” for both of us.

My wish for you — If you’re like us, you have a zillion excuses of why you can’t take an extended vacation.  I encourage you to re-ponder this one.  I admit it can be a pain in the ol’ wazoo making all the decisions regarding just HOW you’ll pull it off, where and when to go, finding a way to do it within tight budgets, coordinating house sitters, if needed, for  indoor pets, (and barn sitters for horse and donkey nuts like us), planning ahead work-wise, packing,loading, unpacking, unloading, etc., etc….but as we again learned, it is SO worth the effort.

For 11 blissful days, we were able to reacquaint and renew our bonds with ourselves and each other without the normal interruptions and diversions of our busy lives…. we had un-rushed moments to better reflect upon this wonderful journey on earth called life, the good and not-so-good people relationships in our lives,  important decisions-t0-be-made that were on our plate….to read books some of which had been in our to-be-read piles for years….to talk and walk together in conversation or silence…..to just be still.

One of my recent posts about the potential consequence of health care procrastination coupled with this one reflects my personal efforts during 2009 at ending at least some of my unwise procrastination habits.  Most of us are experts when it comes to procrastination from years of honing our delay tactic skills.  By the way, a great book on this subject was written many years ago by Dr. Linda Sapadin…while I haven’t read any of her newer books (again, procrastination’s my only excuse), I suspect they are as worthwhile to read as her first book, It’s About Time
The 6 Styles of Procrastination and How to Overcome Them. To this day, I recommend this book to my clients and seminar groups.  It is well written and as an aside, I decided I was guilty of practicing all 6 style of procrastination as described by Dr. Sapadin…I read it initially merely as an additional resource for my clients and workshop groups…and as many of these folks would tell you how it did indeed help them…however, it ended up being a very wise book for me to read for personal reasons and I highly recommend it to you.

I encourage you to do a private self-audit of any areas of your professional and personal life where your delayed health, relationship and/or stress management procrastination may be playing with fire so to speak.  We know when we are about to hit bottom or are in the midst of burnout whether we admit it to others or not or worse, we try to deny it ourselves.  And we know when we are flirting dangerously with ignored health matters and/or vacation deprivation.  I love being with family and friends, I am blessed with a career and business nurtured from my passions, I find peace  and comfort from the outside world within the loving arms of family and the joys of living on a small ranch with our sweet herd of 4-legged family members …BUT…still my husband and I needed a break – big time!  We all do…..breaks from all the good things in our lives and certainly from the not-s0-good …. time to de-stress, be still, play …. time to renew ourselves, our attitudes and our souls.

If this is an area of your life that might need more attention and less procrastination, then I wish you all the best as you make “it” happen.

With wishes for  plenty of “rocking chair” moments,

Nancy

Just thinking today about  easy it is some times to take our closest friends for granted.  If you’re guilty of doing that, make a commitment to change things pronto before it’s too late.  Like all worthwhile and beautiful things in our lives, friendships need nurturing and attention.  And if we just don’t have the time to take care of them, then we sure can’t act shocked or hurt when they eventually fade slowly out of our lives.  True friends lost because of being too busy to take care of these rare, precious “treasures” in our lives remind me of  a quote of a  Norman Cousins’ quote:

On a brighter note, let’s make it a point to call a close friend today…not email, not text…a real, live phone call.  Our day and theirs will be brighter for it and we’ll have a bit more energy in our steps when we return to the busyness of our days.

What we don’t hear as much about, statistically or otherwise, are the more subtle impairments that many people have. A few root causes of the more subtle impairments to our mental (and physical) health include: chronic workaholism; addictions to our high tech tools; ongoing sleep deprivation; obesity; food allergies and intolerances; irregular or no exercise regiment; sexual or other harassment such as office bullying; burnout; long-term excessive stress loads; and the stubborn denial skills many folks have regarding all of the above.

Thinking right now how lucky you are NOT to have any addictions? Good for you unless of course you’re overlooking being overly attached to your tech “tools”. With brutal honesty, think back to your out of the office hours last night or last weekend. How frequently did you check your mobile phone, Blackberry or PDA for messages? How many work-related text messages or emails did you send? How often do you check for messages while supposedly “listening” to others?

Acknowledging and taking steps to address mental health concerns can be very difficult for many people. Instead, they resort to out-dated mindsets that push these types of problems under the rug, too embarrassing or sensitive to be discussed and certainly not shared with others. That traditional and naïve mode of thought feeds the destructive fires of denial and contributes to the damages caused by ignored mental health addictions and other impairments.

Do you personally have any problems with alcohol, other drug abuse or depression that you are not squarely facing? What about the quality of your diet, exercise regimen and sleep? Are there any exhausting stresses on your plate that have been there for a long time? Do you want those same stresses on your plate this time next year? If not, make a list today (for your eyes only) of what steps you can start taking to ensure they won’t be.

Is there anyone in your office showing signs of an existing mental impairment or at a high risk for developing an addiction? What is being done to help them, to ensure clients are not harmed in any manner, and to protect other employees?

Office Impairment Policies

Do you have a written impairment policy in your office? If so, is it current, followed, known and understood by all attorneys and staff?  How do you hold attorneys and staffs accountable if they fail to comply with your policy?

An effective mental impairment policy includes many basic components. First, it defines the mental impairment issues that the policy addresses. Second, it teaches about and explains the signs of mental impairment. Third, it tells employees how to handle a situation when they suspect or know of a co-worker’s or a client’s addiction or problem. Fourth, an office policy outlines how employees will be held accountable if they fail to report mental impairment incidents which could harm a client’s matter, another employee or do other damage. Fifth, the policy should include what resources, if any, the firm offers to employees with mental impairment challenges along with information on local external resources. Finally, the policy should address the firm’s confidentiality policy regarding these types of matters. Of course, the policy can be much broader than the minimal inclusions discussed above.

A written firm policy on mental impairment raises the awareness level of all employees, reflects the firm’s commitment to maintaining the highest level of legal services and ethics, acknowledges the firm’s intolerance for drug or alcohol abuse and the efforts and resources it offers employees needing assistance with mental impairment issues. Here’s just part of what a well written mental impairment policy says about your law firm: our integrity, commitment to clients and respect for them and our high standards for providing excellent services will not under any circumstances be compromised.

Plentiful Resources

The resources available for help with these matters are plentiful. From bar association programs to private therapists to online help and community outreach options, we have an endless number of resources from which to choose. A good place to start is with your local community, your state’s bar association and the ABA’s Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (COLAP) at http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/colap/ or by calling 1-800-285-2221, Ext. 5359. Also, ask other attorneys how they handle these issues and if they would share a copy of their firm’s impairment policy.

Two More Reminders …..

(1) Firm leaders should consider making at least a portion of employees’ vacation time mandatory for all employees each year. Likewise, they need to set good examples of the importance of living balanced professional and personal lives.

(2) Firms should hold stress management/quality of life/mental health workshops at least twice a year for all employees or send them to quality programs offered by other groups. The firm will benefit tremendously from providing this type of education to employees (e.g. higher productivity, fewer absences, reduced stress and improved morale to name a few). In addition, your professional liability and medical insurance providers will applaud you and hopefully offer discounts for your efforts. And if not, check out their competition before applying for re-issuances of your policies.

Courage, fortitude, persistence, awareness, initiative, respectfulness and wisdom. By honing these characteristics in our own lives, we can be a part of the solution rather than keeping our heads in the sand or worse, our becoming one of the statistical nightmares.

Only some of our colleagues suffer from the more serious mental health challenges. But “some” is way too many. Each one of us is responsible for protecting ourselves, our employees and our great profession from the dangers of ignored mental health impairments. A great place to start is with the creation and implementation of a well thought out firm policy on mental health impairment. Equally essential is that we all take an honest, complete look in the mirror and that we get busy “fixin” whatever needs attention in our own lives and lifestyles.

An NBJ article on this same subject was published in 2008 by Lawyers USA