Breaking the Cycle: Examining the Effects of Toxic Culture (Part 2)

Inclusion Crusade 10 – Breaking the Cycle: Examining the Effects of Toxic Culture (Part 2)

Host: Sarah Morgan

Guest: Charlie Pleasant, Licensed Clinical Social Worker & Founder/Executive clinician of The Healing Collaborative

Welcome back to the Inclusion Crusade, where I am on a mission to create workplaces where employees feel safe, seen and supported. One episode at a time.

In preparation of Black History Month, I have been focused on talking about black women who have faced hardship, job loss due to their outspokenness online about racial incidents in their workplace. And as I wrapped up this series with my final interview, I realized that there was one more story that I needed to tell. And that was my own. Today, I have the wonderful privilege of being interviewed by Charlie Pleasant and she will help me to tell my personal story and discuss the effects of toxic culture on our wellbeing.

Connect with Charlie on Twitter @charliepleasant  and on LinkedIn at “Charlie Pleasant LCSW” 

Leading In Color podcast episode: https://leadingincolorpodcast.libsyn.com/website/radical-self-care-during-covid-19-leading-in-color-s2-ep-26

Thank you for listening!

Transcript follows:

Charlie Pleasant 0:13
So I want to go back to some of the physiological experiences that you were having the panic attacks, the back spasms and all of those things. Tell us a little bit more about the other areas in your life that were beginning to be impacted. As you were experiencing that particular environment during that time.

Sarah Morgan 0:31
I am a person who eats when I am stressed. And so weight gain obviously happened, because I give me all the carbs all the sugars. And I’m not, because those are the things moments are really we know, they make you feel good. And so that, you know, I just wanted a big internal hug in the form of French fries. And so that, you know, that happened. I was, I was already in therapy, because kind of prior to all of this beginning, I lost nine family members in 12 months. And just the the, the Navigating multiple cycles of grief simultaneously was a lot. And so I had already begun therapy dealing with that. And now I’m in therapy, trying to work through these grief feelings that I have. But I’m spending the majority of my sessions talking about what’s going on at work. So then, you know, now I gotta go more, in order to make sure that I’m getting all of my needs addressed. So there’s a financial cost, and a time cost, you know, that that brings about me and some thankfully, they’ve removed that. But once upon a time, medical insurance companies limited the amount of therapy sessions that you could have in a calendar year, yeah, in a calendar or in a plan year. And so thankful, shout out. Thanks, Obama. That is one of the things that Obamacare removed, that we don’t talk enough about when we learn best over and over again, that particular piece of legislation. But, um, so that happened, I was in physical therapy, trying to figure out what was going on, with my back. And then eventually ended up on medication because of the anxiety and panic attacks that I was having, having, you know, having to interact with those people. And that in and of itself, it’s like, wow, I’m here I am feeling like, I’m managing my stress, you know, and my mental stress without having to be medicated. And now a big part of that feels like its own defeat to them. And, you know, the stigmas that go along with black people in medication, so part of that feels like a defeat in that circumstance.

Sarah Morgan 2:55
And so, you know, it’s the loss of interest in activities, it’s, you know, everything that goes along with it, I went through phases where I really didn’t want to be around people, particularly, like, I would like reunions and things like that, like I stopped going to homecomings and those sorts of things, my 20th high school reunion I forced myself to go and I was completely anxious the entire time because I knew that people were looking at me and seeing my weight gain and not knowing what’s been what was what was behind it. But I didn’t want to miss the experience so I made myself go but then it ended up being its own source of like, but you know what, now I’m glad I did it and it is what it is. But yeah, like all of that was happening and you don’t people don’t realize that this is happening to people all over the world and yeah, all in all in all of our workplaces. And how again, completely unhealthy it was. And I was not alone in that like I had co workers that were experiencing similar things. Insomnia, and weight loss, weight gain, like all of those soils sentence pair loss. And here’s what’s really funny I was also not funny haha, but ironic, funny. I was also responsible for our health benefits plans. And so because we were a large organization, I get to see utilization and I’m seeing in the utilization within our prescriptions surrounding mental health meds have gone up, our prescriptions surrounding pain medications have gone up, organization wide. You know, while all of this is going on, and our brokers wellness people, were coming to us in our Meet meetings to talk about renewal and talking about, you know, how we better our statistics health wise to say, what’s going on in your population?

Charlie Pleasant 5:09
Because they’re costing us money. Right?

Sarah Morgan 5:15
Yeah, there’s some issues happening here, because we’re seeing that, and I’m sitting in the meetings like sips tea, because I know that this set. And here’s, you know, and I say, and I’ve said this, in things that I’ve written, when you have access to that type of data, within your organization is the thing to watch. It’s a definite indicator, when you start seeing EAP usage going up when you start seeing mental health medications, pain related medications going up on a wide swap across your organization, that is indicative of toxic culture. And we don’t, you know, we don’t pay enough attention to that.

Charlie Pleasant 6:04
I just learned something new today, I would have never thought that you can actually look at the health care utilization of an organization to begin to fill in the gaps of how your employees are feeling in the workplace is not outliers. It sounds like you’re saying there’s no outliers.

Sarah Morgan 6:23
Across the organization across levels within you know, over the years, like this is not x, this is not an accident. This is something going on when you’re seeing it across age demographics across race, and gender identity, when you’re seeing all of this is going on. This is not these are not isolated incidents, you know, this is not one employee. It’s not like you can say, Oh, well, our claims went up, because we had someone who had cancer or we had someone had, you know, a premature birth or something like that. And you see an automatic a catastrophic injury of some sort, you see an automatic rise in, you know, claims in a particular area, because you know, that this happened in your population, when suddenly everybody on mental health medication, and everybody is having issues EAP everybody’s in physical therapy, everybody’s in, in mental health, their witness what’s happening, right, right. What’s the whole the whole population? No, that’s something wrong with the org.

Charlie Pleasant 7:33
That’s indicative of the org, I hope I am making a note of that, because that is something that is an area that I would have never actually looked at as well, we’re talking about looking at the data within the organization, if you want to look at the inequity and lack of inclusion, and what’s happening, look at also the insurance. Usage and get and get a bit of the story of what’s happening in your organization.

Sarah Morgan 8:00
I will tell you know, for listeners who may not know your organization has to be 100 labs or greater, so you have to have at least 100 people on your plan in order for the organization to be entitled to view that data, and you view it in aggregate. So you can’t really see who’s who. But you know that there are five people on this drug? And these are the ages you know, so you’re viewing it in demographic. Yeah, but when you whether you 25 or 55 it at something wrong. Yeah, when it’s in every demographic, something wrong, something that is cultural, it is not, because these are not people, particularly when you’re dealing, our organization was very geographically dispersed. So this isn’t an issue of all we have, you know, everybody is in one particular area, it’s not like COVID, where you can say, well, everybody is going through a pandemic. And so, of course, you would expect this to happen, you know, at this particular time, there’s an economic depression in this area, or there’s some sort of, you know, catastrophic incident within the community. These are people spread out all across the United States. Everybody messed up. No, yeah organizations messed up. Your organization is messed up.

Charlie Pleasant 9:15
That is a great point. That is absolutely a great point to highlight. And and also understanding that when you’re looking at things in aggregate, confidentiality is still protected, as you said, and I want that to be to read and to reiterate if if the organization is able to look at the utilization of their health care plans, though there are no names.

Sarah Morgan 9:37
You don’t know who no one within your population and you may get age and race them if your brokerage and your health insurance company if they track that kind of data you can get age and race and and general geographic location like they’re not gonna say North Carolina, but they’ll say middle Atlantic, so you know, Riley’s in this area. And we give that information in order to specialize to focus in on wellness, so that you can offer programs to that version of your population suggesting suggestions of things that you can do ways that you can support, and so forth. That’s what the information is there for. But so many organizations just skip on by it and to your point, they don’t use it as a tool to know what is happening inside the organization itself. Like they don’t use it as a as a thermometer that tells you the, the temperature of your organization’s culture, they isolated as there’s a lot of separate from them.

Charlie Pleasant 10:42
There’s a lot of was a huge trend of gatekeeping. When it comes to data in organization. The data does not lie from what you’re able to gather. And I think that that is the tale all actually the fear of looking at yourself as an organization. If you were to flip that in a different way, especially when you’re talking about wellness, this is how you can track the wellness of your organization as well, too. This is how you can begin to do either single method or multi method, evaluations or surveys or assessments or method collection to find out. Okay, so what is going on here? How do we tell we see that this is happening, perhaps we need to put out something to our employees. So they can give us a little bit more feedback, and then begin to track with the hopes of it being a downward trend that you’re looking for is if it’s a downward trend, it means that you’re increasing employee wellness. Yeah.

Sarah Morgan 11:33
And when you increase employee wellness, they tend they’re more satisfied with their jobs, they’re more productive in the work that they do, they’re healthier. So they don’t have claims, and they don’t have, you know, their farmers any sort of pharmaceutical dependencies, because Pharmaceut pharmacy claims are claims when you’re talking about just the same way as if you went to the hospital, a pharmacy claim is a claim. So you have you know, all of that, and then that should reduce rates that you then have to pay as an organization for your health care, which means that you can charge your employees less of what comes out of their paycheck. So they’re saving money, there’s so much benefit, you know, to all of those sorts of things. And when you start looking at, when you put humanity back at the forefront, and you start looking at your employees as whole and holistic individuals, then you’re able to do that. But when you’re just focused on as an organization surviving, and as an organization, you know, being profitable by any means necessary, then you’re not as concerned about.

Charlie Pleasant 12:41
I think that we’re getting a huge lesson. I think, I’ve talked to a lot of people when I’m having conversation about. I’ll also say therapy is not the answer for what that what happens in workplace, it can help you bridge the gap as you’re figuring out what’s happening. But when we talk about the workplace, we’re actually talking about something that’s so big and so systemic, which I think the great resignation has been a great answer towards that because it is calling for whether organizations are going to be prepared to deal with it or not, is to call forth that the humanity of people in the workplace, it’s a reckoning of organizations having to re look at give themselves understanding that the way that they have been doing leadership wasn’t working back then. But now you have a great migration of people saying, no, no have to be here. We don’t have to deal with this. We deserve better. We deserve rest. We deserve balance. We deserve to live our lives. And leadership’s and actually, leadership within organizations are actually having a difficult time responding to this, because it’s been that just that I am the boss of this, and this is how you’re going to do things and and workers are figuring out their value.

Sarah Morgan 13:54
Yeah, it’s been a lovely, like, lesson in like, what anti capitalism and action can actually be. And I am here for it. I’m here for it. I think. So first of all, and I noticed didn’t have anything to do with our actual conversation. But we as a culture, particularly in the United States, because other countries, which is why they are COVID cases are going down, they did a much better job at managing shut down and what that really meant we did not have not and it don’t look like we’re going to know that said we have gotten very comfortable with access to things at all times and all hours. I remember in my childhood there that stores were actually closed. You know what I’m saying that that they closed and they closed at reasonable hours. We’re used to things being open at two three o’clock in the morning, you know, or that I can order something it’d be on my doorstep the next day. And so making people adjust to the fact that you can’t just snap your fingers and have something appear or walk out your, you know, neighborhood and have access to food services, whatever it may be, right was an important lesson, because there are people that are required to make that happen to make that go. And those people deserve dignity in their work. They deserve fair wages that allow them to live comfortably, and they deserve rest. Those are things that we all deserve.

Sarah Morgan 15:43
And organizations have to I think, if organizations are going to survive this great resignation, they are going to have to embrace those three things for their workforces, or they are going to find themselves in a perpetual cycle of resignations. And to the point and when word gets out, because it does like people talk and that’s what not just you know Glassdoor, but social media and you know, all those emails, the word will get out and people will not come work for your organization because of it. There you know, I can remember in my previous in the job that we’ve been talking about, our job is at a certain point we get flagged on because people will see it and they be like Don’t Don’t you know, this is not a good place to work for like we would get calls from indeed and CareerBuilder like we got a report of XY and Z happening at your company and we’ve paused your job ads because we need you to demonstrate to us that this is not you know this unethical practices not going on by death. That’s that’s a reality those things are happening today. And um, you know, you’d be that employer if you want to, but you’re gonna have a really hard time with your business survive and thrive and treating people in any old kind of way is not and particularly as we watch Gen Z start to take hold of this workforce these man what a gift, I listen.

Charlie Pleasant 17:36
They was just like, hold my beer. Yeah,

Sarah Morgan 17:39
If y’all don’t even know I feel like such a proud Auntie every time I watch somebody from Gen Z just like completely go off. I don’t know if you saw the thing that was trending on Instagram and Twitter this week. About the the gin and I say kid because the early 20s That texted their boss and said this stuff has given shackles that quit.

Charlie Pleasant 18:09
Giving shackles, shackles, I quit.

Sarah Morgan 18:13
Yes, that’s the energy. Like y’all thought they’ll y’all keep talking about millennials are in their 30s. Now, like, sorry to break it to you is Gen Z is about to show up.

Charlie Pleasant 18:24
Gen Z is showing up not even about they are actually doing it. They are actually putting those things to work to save 40 plus years, we’re at a job and then I’m leaving. I’m not doing that. But but also we know and data shows this the research shows this is that innovation drives productivity as in the success of a business. So what does it say when you’re when you’re younger generation that that’s coming with the next wave of innovation.

Sarah Morgan 18:55
You’re losing talent before they even wouldn’t even get a chance to get it.

Charlie Pleasant 19:01
Tthey’re coming with the next best thing. The next big thing that your organization leaves is because you are committed to an antiquated way of wanting to run your organization, you’re gonna fall behind this race.

Sarah Morgan 19:15
Yeah, and the other thing is, is that innovation cannot thrive in chaos. Innovation cannot thrive in like stress and oppression and all those sorts of things. You cannot be creative in an environment where you don’t feel safe. And so these practices, forget who you hire in a new these practices are hurting the people who are already there. They may not like our generation. Unless you are actively involved in this work in some kind of way. You know, you’re studying workplace culture. You’re working with clients the way that you do like unless you’re actively in this work doesn’t necessary We don’t, on a regular basis don’t really have more roots. For you know what a lot of this is, unless you do this work. So we know what it feels like, you know what it feels like to go to work and feel that those eyes on you? And to feel like I am not. I don’t feel good. You know, we call it micromanaging. We called it you know, politics, like we had all of these other. We have all these other words for what we call it. But the react but now the word is that it’s toxic culture. Yeah. And people cannot thrive in toxic culture and you cannot create new ideas. You can’t hit the innovation you don’t have. Yeah, when you don’t have psychological safety.

Charlie Pleasant 20:47
When you don’t have psychological safety, you don’t have the emotional or mental capacity to actually be in there. Because at that point, everything is exhaustion. Yep, wanting to leave is fear driven. Yep. And it’s just the recreating. So this again, this is what I’m talking with, with my clients about this, that our envy spaces and why it’s okay to leave.

Sarah Morgan 21:09
And ultimately, that’s what I did that, for me was that I, I exited, you know,

Charlie Pleasant 21:18
you parted ways with the company. So since then, how have you been?

Sarah Morgan 21:25
It has been a journey to healing. And and when I say I’m still one, in many ways, because the PTSD of that lingers with you for a very long time. Yes, um, as it does was,

Charlie Pleasant 21:41
can I interrupt really quickly, I want to also qualify, what we’re talking about PTSD is one of the criteria for that if I’m just going straight clinical in this moment, it’s real or perceived threat, real or perceived threat. So going back to what we talked about earlier about being in being in an environment, where it’s actually happening, you can quantify that it’s happening in that real space, but also making the decision to go to a different environment can also bring on the triggering of or the response of perceived threat. Yeah. Which still keeps you there. So it’s a real or perceived threat.

Sarah Morgan 22:22
And so that, healing yourself from that, and learning how to manage yourself, when when, when you do perceive a threat that isn’t real, and how you regulate yourself, when you deal with that is very, it takes time, you know, it takes time, I can say that I’m better. And I can say that a lot of like the physiological effect like I, it was, my body was so inflamed from the prolonged stress that I felt in that environment that I had swelling in, you know, my hands and joints. I eventually got like rashes and things. And when I say I went to every spot, like they really thought I had something like auto immune, like I went and I had cancer, like they were like, is it a cancer? Is it an auto immune disease? Like they had no idea what was going on with me? It was very stress. Yeah, after months and months of evaluations and specialists and filling like a pin cushion with all the blood that was drawn to, you know, blood and swabs and all sorts of sorts of all the fluids. Okay, yeah. And at the end of all of that, it’s stress. And so my focus really, since then has been on working in a way that’s not going to continue to cause me those levels of stress. And I’m happy to say that I’ve found that in with my current employer, this move to because one of the things that I realized is that, and why being in the consulting space is so good for me is that I need to be able to, I don’t work, I no longer can function. Well, I’ll say it that way.

Sarah Morgan 24:16
I no longer can function well, in an environment where I am tied to the outcomes of the organization’s culture. Yes. So if I’m in the seat of HR inside the organization, and I can tell by the data, that because that we’re not treating our employees well, that the culture is not a healthy one. There’s that level of responsibility that I feel to take care of people because that’s a part of my job as human resources. I can’t I can’t thrive, you know, And in that sort of situation. And so it is best for me being in a consultant role where I can give the advice. And then I can step away from it. I’m not tied to that organization and what they do with the advice that I give them in the way that I am, when I’m actually a part of the position. Because if I’m, if a manager does something, and I say, we need to do this, this and this, and they don’t follow that advice. There’s there’s a part of me that internalizes, good, bad or otherwise, that’s, you know, how I’m reacting. And there’s a feeling of personal rejection. And again, it’s that triggering it’s that it’s something wrong with me, is this because I’m a woman? Is this because I’m black? Is this because I’m now I have disability? Is this because I’m over 40? Is this because, like, what is it? You know, what is the thing? And I’m trying to figure out the quote, unquote, what’s wrong with me? What’s the mental gymnastics of what discrimination on my face? And today, like, spin the wheel? What is it? What are they? That I’m dealing with, um, I don’t, I can’t thrive in that sort of environment.

Charlie Pleasant 26:18
What I’m hearing you say, and I’m hoping that the audience is really catching on to that is that when we’re going when we’re wanting to transition in and out of places of toxicity, or out of working environments, they can be just work or any other place. And a lot of this is also redefining what works and alliances for absolute. And we and we don’t talk about that enough, we don’t talk about that there is actually a redefining of what’s really in alignment of what works well for us, which there’s a grief that can come to that, because there are a lot of people that have a trajectory of how they see their careers. And sure that understanding or how their careers are gonna go and what they would like to to accomplish. And that being railroaded with the isms and the toxic culture, and then having to make a pivot and make an adjustment into what does life now look like for me, because I’ve had these experiences, I can’t ignore these experiences anymore. I’m also dealing with the trauma of being afraid to try somewhere else, I have to grieve the fantasy of what I set up for myself. And then I have to make a pivot and redefine what what an enjoyable working relationship looks like. For me, which it sounds like that you had to do for yourself as part of your healing work as well says, I don’t thrive in the organization where I’m attached to that to their outcomes. That’s that’s huge, because we work because we’ll spend a long time. And you know, one of the things that’s oftentimes explored or or celebrated in black culture, and it could be in other cultures is our resiliency in white and always having to make the square peg fit through the round hole, not understanding that that’s never met. That’s never the way that we were meant to live. I have a very, I have a love hate relationship, even in my clinical work around the word resiliency, resiliency, and how I see it is a is a stress response that’s only meant to be activated for a temporary period of time. This this is a thing that has been cloaked on black culture, specifically black women, ergo, the Superwoman syndrome that we deal with in our culture, that resiliency, not only is something that we’re supposed to do as black women, but it’s celebrated. Yes, celebrated in a way, not understanding

Sarah Morgan 28:39
what the cost is to you. The cost of that

Charlie Pleasant 28:43
is because mentally and emotionally and how that shows up in our bodies. When you attach a reward to something like that. It’s immediately you’re going you’re heading in the wrong direction. Yeah.

Sarah Morgan 28:57
And the other thing is that the there, the flip side of that then becomes a shame that you feel when that when you can’t resist when you can’t bounce back. When you bounce, then that limits you from being able to get the help and support you need because you’re afraid to speak up because you feel like something is wrong with you that you can’t just bounce back from the thing, the way that everyone expects you to.

Charlie Pleasant 29:22
That’s right. And what your body is actually telling you is that you weren’t meant to bounce back for this shutting you down for a week.

Sarah Morgan 29:28
Go sit up, go lay down. I love that the body is telling you

Charlie Pleasant 29:35
that’s what your body’s telling you. I mean, you burn your adrenals you have an overload of cortisol in your system. We are not meant to be in that state. But we are in a culture that celebrates women like us being in operating at that pace or when stress comes. The threshold is oftentimes so high. You couldn’t see the heart attack come in, but five years ago, you already started to have the symptoms. Yeah. Yeah. Like push it with the capacity, unfortunately, to experience that is so large that when it hits us, when the body begins to react, it hits us hard again. You hit us so hard. Yeah, I’ve struggled with that. I don’t I don’t want to be celebrated for, you know, for resiliency.

Sarah Morgan 30:22
Yeah, me and resilience have broken up and we’re not getting back together. Because I did agree that I fought to be resilient. I fought to keep trying to find a way in, right. Yeah. And that’s where that resiliency tells you to do that there’s a way there’s a way I gotta make a way. Because the way is out, that’s the way, by the way is out. Yeah. And, that is completely, okay.

Charlie Pleasant 30:55
Permission to say it’s okay to leave.

Sarah Morgan 30:57
Yeah. And learning to make that okay for yourself to tell the story. So that it makes it okay, for others, is really critical for me in the work that I do now. And I have a lot of conversation around, like in the coaching that I do with the clients that I work with, and in the organization that I serve now about, like, how are we going to for the people who work here? And for the people that I work with? Like, how are we making time for rest? How are we making, you know, how are we honoring net, the natural boundaries that people should be having between their work life and their home life? Like, what how are we we need to enforce that with the same enthusiasm that we enforce everything else, you know, that matters to us in our organization? What are you doing, sending me emails at two o’clock in the morning? Go lay down? Uh huh. You know, like that, that needs to be just as important. And for me, it is, you know, at this stage in my career as I look at it, because I got easy another, you know, 15-20 years in the workforce barn, right, you know, hitting the lottery or something. Right. So knowing that that’s the case, like, I’m thinking very heavily about legacy. And what I want to leave behind for others through the work that I do the word, you know, the words that are right podcasts like this, like when I’m, you know, when I’m not doing this anymore, and people hear of me, you know, I want that message to resonate loud and clear in a way that I knew I couldn’t say 10 years.

Charlie Pleasant 32:52
And I feel like our work is very similarly aligned in that way. I think a lot about just as a therapist, I spend a lot of time focusing on self, self worth, self awareness and discovery and decision making. And just the way in which we are taught that we only have one right decision that we can make, which can actually stifle us from making any decision at all. Yeah. And I really work with my clients and understanding that there are multiple decisions that we can make at any given time, we can pivot anytime that we want.

Sarah Morgan 33:23
Anytime we want to.

Charlie Pleasant 33:26
Absolutely want to we can make a pivot. But we but we’re not giving that we don’t, we haven’t been given that type of messaging. And we’re not giving the space of processing, we are always given the tool of pushing through. So when if your work if anybody to work with me, or anybody that’s ever worked with me, they know that we spend a lot of time slowing things down. So you can actually hear in feel somatically what’s coming up for you because your answers like they reside in that place, the answers to your next best thing reside and what you can feel in, in what’s happening in your system. So and so that’s the legacy that I want to leave in this work as well too, is that I want you to have permission to slow down and to actually feel some things and to begin to redefine the narrative of your wellness and to and to and to go lay down and to and to understand that we do have soft spaces, you know, that that we deserve to land in versus being celebrated for resiliency, that’s that’s stressing our complete system.

Sarah Morgan 34:31
Yeah. And that is why I am happy to announce to the listening audience that Charlie Pleasant is coming on as our experts in residence wellness for the second season of the Inclusion Crusade, so she and I are going to be getting together once a month like this and taking some hot tea. Topics ripped from the headlines kind of things and also ripped from the gram. And the Twitter’s because, yes, and the LinkedIn and all of those from the social media streets have stories of what’s going on in the workplace, looking at it from a dei lens, looking at it from a holistic wellness lens, and talking about ways that we can continue to make workplaces better, safer, psychologically, and otherwise, for employees. And so I am so happy to have her in the chair alongside me as we go on this journey together. And I know that you all loved her as a guest. Every time that I’ve had her on both of my shows, and so we just gonna keep giving this voice to you.

Charlie Pleasant 35:52
We’re gonna keep giving it to the people just because this is what they want.

Sarah Morgan 35:56
Yes, this is what they want. And this is what they need for sure, what we need.

Charlie Pleasant 36:00
This is exactly what we need. So I’m excited to be in house with Sarah, I’m excited to be in house with Inclusion Crusade I am looking forward to hearing from all of you if there are areas that you want to touch on, if there’s specific areas in your workplace, feel free to hit either one of us up, and all of that information with our contact information with Sarah. You can also check me out in my work over at www.Charlie Pleasantlcsw.com. And just kind of see the work that I do. I’ll be updating my website continuously as we grow, but I am I’m happy to be in this space wellness is I feel like it’s the last frontier that’s been left out wellness in a in a very intentional way. Not in a in a reactionary way.

Sarah Morgan 36:47
Something is wrong with me. I have to fry my that point you are already you are an illness not. Well, right.

Charlie Pleasant 36:54
Right. We’re trying to present the illness here, which we’re trying to stab that off and living in wellness, because we do deserve that. But that that’s what what is owed to us. So I’m excited to really be so intentional about having these conversations and and offering some perspectives on hope. My hope is to offer some perspectives that have you thinking deeply about some things. I tell my clients and people that I coach, I lead from questions, a lot of times the best practice questions out of a deck, and it can get us to the answers versus having an answer for everything. Yeah, sometimes I don’t have answers for everything. But I’m gonna have a good question that can get us into a different direction. Yep, towards getting here. So I’m excited.

Sarah Morgan 37:36
I am excited to and I want to thank you for this interview for getting me through, you asked me some stuff and took us in some directions that I wasn’t even expecting and got me to share some things that I did not intend to. So that was excellent. And thank you for agreeing to join me on this crusade for inclusion and for better workplaces as a part of the HR Happy Hour Network. So I want to thank you all for listening to our latest conversation again. We will be back again next month to do this all over and to talk some more. And in the meanwhile, if you have questions, start by reaching out to me at hello at buzzaRooneyllc.com. Let’s start to be the place until we get our own email address and everything set up but start start with that and send us your questions. What do you want to hear us talk about and you can of course always hit us up on social media. I’m @TheBuzzonHR on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Charlie, you give us your handles.

Charlie Pleasant 38:54
Twitter Instagram, I am on tick tock because I’ve been having a ball with the kids over here. Do you understand what I’m having? No, I’m having a ball and tick tock, but I’m at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and tick tock all @CharliePleasantLCSW.

Sarah Morgan 39:09
There you go. So you can hit either one of us up or send an email with your questions and your suggestions of what it is that we should be tackling next. And we look forward to hear from you. And I think yeah, and I thank you once again for listening to this latest episode of the Inclusion Crusade brought to you by the HR Happy Hour Network.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai