The Exact Script to Use When a Colleague’s Being Rude

[00:00:00] Rachel: What if you witnessed somebody humiliating a colleague or being really, really rude? Is it your responsibility to deal with it or could that just make life harder for everybody involved? And what happens to our performance when we feel like we’ve been treated badly. Now, one of the great things about hosting this podcast is I get to interview loads of people in here, loads and loads of new ideas. It’s not often that something genuinely changes my practice almost immediately.

[00:00:29] Now this podcast episode was one of those that stopped me in my tracks and meant that I completely changed what I was doing. The original episode was really long, so far, ask them a special, we’ve talked it down and given you that bit that I found so fascinating. So we’re playing an extract of one of our standout episodes from 2023 with Dr. Chris Turner. Now he was the co-founder of the Civility Saves Lives movement, and I’ve had so much feedback from people about how helpful this episode was. And I hope that this episode is going to be easier to share with your colleagues because it’s a lot shorter.

[00:01:02] And also I’m delighted to say that Chris will be joining us. At our frog Fest, virtual summit on the 28th of November in the morning. So if you haven’t already booked your ticket. Follow the link in the show notes or had the shapestoolkit.com/frogfest to find out just how to have those awkward conversations.

[00:01:21] And if he wants to hear my conversation with Chris and Phil, there’s a link in the show notes too. Otherwise just enjoy these edited highlights, focusing on helping civil is more than just about being nice. And how it really can save lives. ​

[00:01:35] This is a You Are Not a Frog quick dip, a tiny taster of the kinds of things we talk about on our full podcast episodes. I’ve chosen today’s topic to give you a helpful boost in the time it takes to have a cup of tea so you can return to whatever else you’re up to. Feeling energized and inspired for more tools, tips, and insights to help you thrive at work. Don’t forget to subscribe to you are not a frog wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:02:02] Chris: My name’s Chris Turner. I’m a consultant in emergency medicine at university, also as a Coventry in Warwickshire. And a few years ago I co-founded Civility Saves Lives, which is a grassroots organization dedicated to raising awareness of the impact of behavior on performance.

[00:02:18] We really don’t like it when the people around us ::are treating each other in a negative way. And I think that’s important in healthcare as well because certainly when I was at the very early stages of my career and as a medical student, humiliation in front of patients was utterly normalized. And we allowed some pretty hideous behaviors at senior levels.

[00:02:44] Rachel: This is a You Are Not a Frog quick dip, a tiny taster of the kinds of things we talk about on our full podcast episodes. I’ve chosen today’s topic to give you a helpful boost in the time it takes to have a cup of tea so you can return to whatever else you’re up to. Feeling energized and inspired for more tools, tips, and insights to help you thrive at work. Don’t forget to subscribe to you are not a frog wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:03:11] But how, how do we give this feedback to these people who, like you said, there are a few psychopaths around, but most people don’t go to work to give people a hard time.

[00:03:23] Chris: The feedback needs to matter to the person that you’re talking to. I, I could give you some feedback just now, Rachel, about your behavior and if, if you don’t give a damn about how you’re seen, you’re not gonna give a damn about the feedback, it’s not important to you.

[00:03:40] So I see part of the Civility Saves Lives stuff as being an arc. The first bit is making the argument that behavior matters. I think most people end up deciding that it’s important on their terms. And then when it comes to feeding back to people, so what we know is just getting people on board with the idea that behavior matters.

[00:04:01] And you know, none of us see ourselves perfectly all the time. You and I will have interactions with this week with people and those other people will walk away feeling quite damaged by that. And we won’t have a clue. And the more it happens, the more it’s normalized, the more that’s just the way that Rachel or Chris interact with people and it becomes just us.

[00:04:21] And then you get this really dangerous statement in the workplace where people go, oh, you know, that’s just Chris, but no one’s told me. And I don’t know how I’m coming across. So then we need to get into how you have these conversations.

[00:04:34] And it’s interesting the, the way that you set that conversation up was you telling somebody who had been uncivil to you about how you felt. And that is a phenomenally high level feedback skill, like really, really difficult. And the reason that it’s really difficult is say it’s me and you, and I speak to you, and I leave you feeling like crap, especially if I’m the boss. If you have to come and give me feedback back, we know that the person in your position believes that I deliberately did it.

[00:05:07] That means if you come and give me feedback, what you’re saying is, Chris, so you know how you tried to hurt me the other day. Well, it worked, please don’t do it again. That’s empowering your aggressor. You have to be an idiot to want to do that, because, or, or just a masochist. So we don’t have those conversations. Because actually much as we want to have that degree of personal mastery, we want to be able to go and say, yeah, this is how it is to somebody, actually, we’re the wrong person to do it, because when we do go into those conversations, we carry a lot of emotional baggage with us. And that emotional baggage arouses us, closes our bandwidth, stops us being the best version of ourselves, and it means that we often get into confrontational interactions, or we are so meek and mitigating that the other person hasn’t a clue what we’re trying to say to them.

[00:06:00] The right person to have the conversation is not you, it is somebody else. Preferably a peer of mine who then comes and has the conversation with me. It’s a conversation that has three overarching meta principles. The first one is this, and it’s really counterintuitive. The person having the conversation is going to care about the person they’re speaking to. Because people who are damaging others in interactions are often quite damaged and hurting themselves. Also, if they don’t know, This is gonna be a difficult thing to hear. So we are gonna care about them in that conversation.

[00:06:38] The second thing we’re gonna do is we are going to have the conversation with zero judgment about intent. We literally don’t know the intent of the person who is speaking.

[00:06:49] And the third bit is we are going to deliver the professional privilege of a package of information, of knowing how we are perceived or that person is perceived, which is a really long way of saying, telling, telling someone how somebody else felt.

[00:07:05] And the way that we teach people to do this, it is three step technique. It has those three overarching things in the first place, but the three step technique goes like this. Check in, raise the flag, land the information. And the check-in is like this. So, the situation is now that Rachel has been involved in something and Rachel’s, someone’s pretty devastated at the other end of it. Uh, Rachel’s blithely going on through life as Rachel does, boiling frogs and doing all the rest of it. And I’m gonna go and speak to you. And I, and I come and speak to you and it would be as soon as is practical, but also at the right time for you.

[00:07:44] And the conversation, the first bit is check in. And I say, Rachel, how are you? No, really, how are you? And I pause and I wait. And you might well say you’re fine, or you might then speak for eight minutes without stopping, ‘ cause you are not all right.

[00:08:00] The second bit is raising the flag. And it would go like this. It’d go so Rachel, what happened with Sam yesterday in the department? And you might say, oh, you know what? I made this joke. And I realize afterwards it could have sounded racist, but I don’t think she heard. And I can say, Hey, she heard.

[00:08:18] So I’ve checked in, I’ve raised the flag, and now I’m gonna land the information. Really, really carefully constructed and very simple, and it goes like this. So Rachel, after you spoke with Sam yesterday, Sam was really upset and I know you’d want to know. Now, what will happen then is the other person will speak. They want to say what happened from their perspective. They want the chance to talk. That’s all cool. The important thing has been done. This person now has that piece of information that they can choose what they want to do with it. Because if you don’t know, how can you choose to behave differently the next time?

[00:08:53] Rachel: So you don’t tell ’em anything else, or if they then start asking, well, why, what did I do? I don’t, can you then give more information?

[00:08:59] Chris: Well it depends what you know. Um, so, after you spoke with Sam yesterday, Sam was really upset and I know you’d want to know. They might well want to understand that, and I get that. The important thing is that Sam was upset because we know that upset people don’t perform so well.

[00:09:13] And what might happen there, what, what sometimes happens is that people will ask lots of questions to try and understand it a bit better, and they will sometimes go, that’s a lot of rubbish. So go fine, but Sam was still upset. And you furnish people with the knowledge of somebody else’s emotion, and it’s not really my place to explain why they were upset. Arguably, if this person wants to know, then that the, the right place, the best place to have a conversation with someone where they’re saying sorry for it.

[00:09:43] Now, I know that occasionally people don’t say sorry, but the vast, vast majority of people do. Because we really don’t like hurting our fellow person.

[00:09:52] Rachel: Okay, so you’ve given them feedback and go Sam was upset, I knew you’d want to know. But what’s the person that’s you are talking to, the person that’s done the upsetting doesn’t know and they don’t really have the skills to find out? ‘ Cause it’s actually, it’s, I think it’s quite an advanced skill to go to someone and go, can I just check in? ’cause I noticed that when I said this, you responded in a way that I was quite surprised that, can I just check what was going on for you? And the story in my head is, I might have done this, but can I, you know, again, that takes quite a lot of courage and, and a bit of skill to do that.

[00:10:21] Chris: And we are really rubbish at reading other people’s facial expressions.

[00:10:26] Rachel: Totally.

[00:10:27] Chris: So it becomes about curiosity, not trying to guess what the other person’s feeling, asking them. We are so bad at it. And when we take judgment into it, when we decide that we know how somebody else is feeling, we’re just wrong lots and lots of the time.

[00:10:42] Rachel: So if, if someone needs the skills to find out what they’ve done, just literally going up to someone going, I can, you just fill me and I, you know, I, I, I, I think I may have upset you, I’m, I’m curious, did I, and what was the cause and what, what, what’s going on in just being curious?

[00:10:54] Chris: did I do?

[00:10:55] Rachel: Yeah. What did I

[00:10:56] Chris: Just asking what did I do? I, and not having the conversation to prove that you didn’t do it because they got upset. They, they, they own that emotion. it’s a case of being curious to understand how they experienced it.

[00:11:11] Rachel: Do you need Sam’s consent to go and have that conversation with, with the person that upset her?

[00:11:18] Chris: Okay, so that’s a really interesting question. ’cause a lot of the time, once people have talked about it, they don’t want some, once they talk, they’ve kind of got it off their chest and they go, I don’t want to tell it to anyone. The way that we advise is that there is a commitment to having the conversation. As soon as we are having first conversation, there is a commitment to tell the supposed perpetrator, because otherwise how can they know?

[00:11:42] Rachel: But how do you avoid getting into the rescuer victim role when you are doing this? I’ll go and have that conversation on your, it’s not really on your, it’s, I was about to say on your behalf, but you’re not having it on their behalf, are you’re having it on everybody’s behalf,

[00:11:55] Chris: Yes. Yeah. Okay. I think, I think it helps to step away from Karpman for, for understanding the relationships that are going on here. You’re not a rescuer, you’re not a victim, you’re a messenger, you’re, you are giving somebody a piece of information that they have a professional right to know, and you’re handing it to them because then that knowledge could literally result in other people having their lives saved. Because if we go through life leaving trails of devastation behind us and the people that we work with, then the consequence is that our patients get worse care and we are there to provide the best care that we can.

[00:12:39] So in my head, this is not about the drama triangle. This is a different relationship and it’s a, it’s a more adult adult relationship’s. And it’s not about rescuing, it’s about informing in the most kind, compassionate way that we can because it is not easy to hear this kind of stuff. None of us enjoys hearing that we left other people distressed. We don’t like that in the fir. Well, very few of us enjoy that. But particularly if we know that that means that our patients are getting less good care, that’s even worse. So compassionate delivery of a package of information that people have a professional right to know about.

[00:13:20] Rachel: And I love that ’cause you’ve reframed it from what you’re not doing. You’re not going and rescuing the victim who’s been hurt. You’ve noticed the behavior. And it’s not really, it’s not really about anymore. It’s not about the victim of the behavior anymore. It’s about the person that did that behavior. It’s about telling them, giving them feedback about the behavior so that they can change for the future and keep everybody safe, right?

[00:13:42] Chris: And it’s also something else. It’s that there may have been no intention, none whatsoever. In fact, sometimes the person didn’t even do the behavior that the other person’s taking offense at. It didn’t happen that way. But this is all about how we experience life as human beings. And we don’t all experience it the same way. And we get stuff wrong. And we think, we think that we’ve, we have the, the full truth, but of course we don’t. It doesn’t matter on one level, this is the level that it doesn’t matter on. If we have an interaction, I’m left feeling less at the end of that interaction, the consequences that my performance is dropping off. We don’t want that in our, in our teams.

[00:14:27] And you know, one of the things I learned coming to England is that there is, there is language that I would use in Scotland amongst my mates that you guys, you guys are so soft, you’re horrified by it,

[00:14:40] Rachel: Oh yeah. You must never anything directly, Chris.

[00:14:42] Chris: Well, yeah, no, I mean, there, there are words that you can, there’s a word that I have learned is apparently a dreadful word that begins with C, and it’s a very small word. And apparently it’s a really bad word in England. In the groups that I function with, uh, or some of them in Scotland, it means person. Literally that’s what it means.

[00:15:05] Rachel: I mean, there, there’s, there’s a few things that, that strike me as, as why this is so helpful. Firstly, is that what you are when you are raising that, just to let you know, Yeah, what happened because Sam was upset. I thought you’d like to know. I think a lot of the time we don’t give the feedback, well ’cause we don’t wanna upset the person, but because we don’t, we don’t know what we’ll then say, what advice would we give. You know, and this is how I think you should change, or this is what you should do instead. But if you don’t have to do that, then great. All you’re doing is saying, actually that happened. Thought I’d thought I’d flagged that up for you.

[00:15:35] Chris: One of the things that we know about this, and this is uncomfortable, is that as leaders we generally are more accepting of criticism If we invite it. Uh, uninvited criticism or uninvited challenge is difficult. Invited challenge. We feel like we have a degree of control over it. And that’s back to that thing that Magnus taught me to say in trauma about, you know, if you think I’ve missed something or you think I’ve got something wrong, please tell me.

[00:16:02] I was talking a few weeks ago to a surgeon who, he admitted this in a, in a group of folk, and, and you know what? It’s, it’s uncomfortable what he admitted, and I would entirely resonate with it, and it’s, it’s this, he said, I really like people to call me by my first name in theater. And everyone calls each other by a first name. And I like it when my team call me by my first name. I really dislike it when somebody comes in who’s not being part of that team and isn’t part of that group who comes in and uses my first name.

[00:16:29] And it’s very clear that’s not right, okay? And yet it is the human condition that we don’t enjoy somebody assuming they can do that. I don’t enjoy it. If I’m running trauma and somebody comes in and assumes they can come in and criticize what I’m doing. You know, it’s like, who the hell are you? Because actually I find that destabilizing. And I suppose part of that is me trying to control my own environment so that I’m not overstimulated by it and that I’m able to perform at my best.

[00:16:58] Rachel: I, I think that is just a human condition, isn’t it? Because nobody likes, well, criticism gets our backs up, whether it’s well intended, whether it’s right or not, because again, it’s just that threat thing, isn’t it? So if it’s uninvited, it just catches you unawares for a start. If it’s un, if it’s invited, then you, you could brace yourself for it. And you know, and you know that it’s got good intentions behind it as well. So there’s, it’s completely different kettle of fish.

[00:17:23] Um, but what if you are that person? Because it’s, it’s really hard, you know, I’m sure everyone listening to this podcast is not only thinking about people that they need to go give feedback to about their behavior, but thinking, oh my goodness, and then I know I am that person. And the problem is when we get that feedback, it can be really devastating. And then I’ll m does flare up. So how do we manage ourselves? How do we, how do we not not be that person that responds really badly, but we are the person who is inviting criticism and, and, and dealing with it when it comes?

[00:17:55] Chris: So we’re going to have a response. We’re humans. We’re gonna have a response. We’re gonna be disappointed in ourselves. The point is that us having our own reaction about our self worth, this is not somebody else telling us that we’ve been bad, the the transaction totally different. This is an internal monologue, an internal understanding.

[00:18:15] And I’ve had it done to me twice. Twice in the last 10 years. I’ve had feedback delivered to me in something resembling the way I’ve just described. And on both occasions, I had precisely zero knowledge that I had hurt somebody. And on both occasions it gave me the opportunity to go and speak with that person and to resolve it. And on both occasions I ended up having very good working relationships with those people.

[00:18:44] And one of the things we know about people who say, sorry, and the act of saying sorry, is that lots of folk hate it. They’re, they’re just at test saying, sorry. But the truth is that if we screw up with somebody before we screw up with somebody, they see us at say a level five in terms of how much they like or respect us. We screw up with them, we go down to three.

[00:19:08] Somebody tells us that we’ve screwed it up, we go and say, sorry, now we’re not a five, now we’re a seven. We rise in people’s estimation. The act of saying sorry is hugely powerful. It sees others, it recognizes flaws in ourselves and it says we can be better,

[00:19:27] Rachel: The other thing I have noticed is, and this happens to me recently and we, I’m quite upset on this podcast about these stories of guilt and shame and I ought to, and I’m such a bad person. I thought I’d upset someone recently and I was really beating myself up about it and I noticed it that they reacted slightly offhand with me and, and I was like, I, I thought I can’t go and I can’t speak to them. What if I, what if they tell me I, you know, what if they really come back with criticism, et cetera? But I did, and I went to speak to them and I had upset them. I had, and they, they said, yes, you did, and they told me and I apologized and it was like, it was like a drain clean had gone down the drain and just the relationship was much, much better.

[00:20:08] But the thing, the reason I’m telling this story is the story I was making up in my head about how awful it would be if I actually had done that thing I thought I had done was actually much worse than receiving the criticism that I actually had done it.

[00:20:21] Chris: A hundred percent that.

[00:20:22] Rachel: We still fear it though. We do. It’s, it’s hard. It’s my, it’s my quest to be able to do this without, without telling myself all those awful shame stories. ‘Cause we all muck up, don’t we? Particularly when, when you work in environments where literally people are dying and, and life turns on, you know, split decisions and all that sort of stuff.

[00:20:38] So, Chris, with all of this, what if you had to distill this advice into three top tips for people, what would they be?

[00:20:46] Chris: I would say be kind to yourself. You’re gonna screw up. Everyone screws up. Own it when you do. Find the people who let you own it without weaponizing it. And when other people screw up, let them own it, but don’t judge them on it. Support them through it because nobody wants to screw up. And the final thing I would, I would ask people to think about is just really quickly, what’s your theme tune? What music do you want people to hear when you walk in the door? Choose your music. And then decide how you need to behave. If you want people to hear that music when you walk through the door.

[00:21:21] Rachel: I love that. Do you mind me asking, what’s your theme tune?

[00:21:23] Chris: Uh, mine’s really embarrassing ’cause the people who wrote it are a bit of a pair of clunkers. Right Said Fred. Deeply Dippy. I love it.

[00:21:31] Rachel: For a minute. I was thinking it’s, I’m too sexy for my shirt.

[00:21:35] Chris: No, no, no, no. Definitely Deeply Dippy. Yes, I’m very, very, very, very sure.

[00:21:42] Rachel: We now know you are next, the next time you do like a TEDx talk, we now know what’s gonna be playing as you walk on. So, so, so, so helpful. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. If people wanna find more about, you know, the Civility Saves Lives or get in contact with you or anything, how, how can they do that?

[00:22:00] Chris: civilitysaveslives.com is the website, and if you write to us there, everybody gets answered, usually reasonably quickly, but everybody gets answered. And then one of us has a chat with folk. It’s usually me if people wanna talk about this stuff. Um, so you see us get us there and we’re on Twitter at, at civility Saves.